MacBreak Weekly 929 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, Alex Lindsay they're all here. There's absolutely nothing to talk about, but there are some interesting rumors about how the HomePod may be changing. We have some interviews with Apple CEO and Johnny Ive, and then Apple in Russia and China Two very different experiences. It's all coming up. Next on MacBreak Weekly.

0:00:35 - VO
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit.

0:00:42 - Leo Laporte
This is MacBreak Weekly episode 929. Recorded Tuesday, July 9th 2024: Honkin' Down Their Snorkel.

It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest news from Apple. And, despite the fact that there is zero news from Apple, we even have a Vision Pro segment. So prepare yourself. That is Andy Ihnatko laughing at me in the background. Hello, Andy.

0:01:05 - Andy Ihnatko
Da-do-do-do, da-da-da-da is all I want to say to you Leo, da-da-da-da he is, and we'll have time to say things like that because, again, there's very little news Right From GBH in Boston.

0:01:15 - Leo Laporte
What do you do in GBH when there's nothing to say?

0:01:19 - Andy Ihnatko
Mostly we blame the current mayor for the meltdown of the MBTA. That's always.

0:01:25 - Leo Laporte
It's all the big dig, the big dig row in life.

0:01:27 - Andy Ihnatko
Even if we're making it up, we just figure, hey, we're just getting ahead of the next story. It's very efficient.

0:01:32 - Leo Laporte
Have you ever had a chili dog? What is it called? I was talking about this hot dog that's popular in Boston. I never had it. It's made of ice cream Never, and I never even heard of it, but she apparently A counterpart to the Choco Taco, because the Choco Taco is perfection.

0:01:53 - Andy Ihnatko
You're a fool to go up against that.

0:01:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, I think this is probably a regional delicacy, that nobody.

0:02:00 - Andy Ihnatko
I will get to work preventing it from reaching my region, would you?

0:02:05 - Leo Laporte
please keep it out of Rhode Island. We've got better things to do. Also, with us from officehoursglobal, mr Alex Lindsay, my personal consultant on all things streaming. Hello Alex, hello, good to be here, it's good to be with you. You are using the camera that I'm planning to use in the new Dix. It works pretty well. You're doing something similar to what we do. We're going to do. We decided on your recommendation, zoom ISO, and we're going to tie it with Ecamm, because Ecamm now supports Zoom and should be a fairly easy thing for an idiot like me to do. And I have moved this Dr Evil chair. We had two. I have moved one to the attic there you go.

It looks beautiful up there.

0:02:53 - Andy Ihnatko
The squirrels are going to love it.

0:02:55 - Alex Lindsay
How's that? It's been really hot last week. It's hot. You're going to get your own AC unit 14,000 BTU, you told me last week. I know, and with us also your own ac unit 14 000 btu.

0:03:04 - Leo Laporte
That's the key to the you told me last week, I know, and with us also from his home studio, the garage, or is it? You never know, Jason Snell, you never know.

0:03:15 - Jason Snell
You can look and see but I am in the garage today. It's good to be here and I just I I the moment that leo announces at the top of the show that nothing is happening. I just want everybody to look down at the podcast app that they're using and see how long this episode actually ended up being. Exactly how much nothing there was Because the curse now has fallen upon us.

0:03:36 - Andy Ihnatko
The over-under is now 23 minutes past our scheduled end.

0:03:39 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's slid up from 90 minutes to two hours now. So thank you for cursing us, leo. Should we start with the what's happening From 90 minutes to two hours now? So thank you for cursing us, leo, should we start?

0:03:44 - Leo Laporte
with the what's happening. I missed it, but it looks like it was interesting. The Johnny Ive interview yeah, Did you put that in, Andy? That sounds really cool.

0:03:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I put that in. So there's a. You've heard of Desert Island Discs. Yeah, this is not Desert Island Discs, even though it is totally Desert Island Discs, but it's a very nice in-depth interview with Johnny Ive in which he mentions here's seven songs that I was listening to at certain points in my life and it's a really nice overview of his life, from his childhood through his work at Apple, both pre-Steve Jobs, during Steve Jobs' tenure and afterward, and his future, steve Jobs' tenure and afterward and his future Lots of really it's a substantive thing.

He's not being protective of his thoughts at all and you hear a lot of really, really interesting things about how, like in the design of the iPod, that, like, white earbuds weren't really a thing on audio. Usually it's like, you know, black or something subtle. But he decided that not just as a promotional thing, but he wanted the person who's using the iPod weren't really a thing on audio. Usually it's like, you know, black or something subtle, but he decided that not just as a promotional thing, but he wanted the person who's using the iPod to understand that because the iPod is white, the headphones are white too, because these are an intrinsic part of the device. And then later on he came to appreciate that, oh, it's really great, because now I'm going on first time, I'm on the subway and I see like three or four people with these white headphones, earbuds that can't be anywhere else, and it made him feel really, really super happy.

0:05:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, actually it's funny because I was watching the Bear last night and we were just talking about it before the show was wearing AirPod Pros and I thought, wow, this is so iconic now that somebody can wear it. It doesn't look like product placement, it's just. In fact I imagine they had a debate. Well, should she wear some nondescript? No, everybody on the subway, everybody on the t is wearing airpods, so not the wired ones, and they're white. They're very distinctive. Yeah, it was a smart move on his part. Uh, good branding move. So his seven, not desert island disc. By the way, this this is from the San Francisco standard, which I have never heard of Sophie Beerman, but I think I'm going to start listening.

0:05:51 - Andy Ihnatko
It was a good interview. Yeah yeah, and if you want to listen to it, there's a. There's a full transcript on the same site.

0:05:55 - Leo Laporte
So and a Spotify playlist so you can listen to the seven songs. Da Do do, da, da da da from the police. Did I do that correctly? The main theme from Carter Takes a Train by Roy Budd, papa. Now, is this going to get us taken down if I just say the names? No, no, I'm so skittish. The minute I pay two notes of that, though, boom, we're gone. Papa was a rolling stone by the Temptations. Don't you forget about me. Simple minds, defined Dancing by Thomas Newman. You know not. You know not his obvious hit.

0:06:37 - Jason Snell
Well, that's the, that's the that's from Wally the Wally soundtrack Ah, it's one of the score.

0:06:43 - Leo Laporte
So there's a little Disney loyalty here from the former Apple employee. It's one of the score, so there's a little disney loyalty here from the former apple employee.

0:06:48 - Andy Ihnatko
It's kind of funny he starts talking about it's. It was a very good interview. That can like basically not ask and answer their own questions. You know what I mean, or not prompt the substance I hate that please tell the story about this yeah, it's more like I.

I bet that if I ask him in context about this movie and his relationship with Steve Jobs, there'll be an interesting response. He said yeah, you know, it was a little bit. It was a little bit like I designed these two robots and one of them was like kind of old and been around for ages and another one was kind of fresh and new and was. It was a little felt a little bit like my, me and Steve like oh, that's even more heartbreaking now.

0:07:25 - Leo Laporte
So so how many desert islanders did you get? I don't think you got seven, five, I think I don't remember. So he's got two more 40 by you, two and ivies. This is the day you know what this is. A. Is it my? Is it just my lack?

0:07:41 - Andy Ihnatko
of good eight tracks sorry, it's eight, eight tracks and desert ivies. That's great. See, I don't know these yeah.

0:07:47 - Leo Laporte
I follow you, Jason Snell, on iTunes because I figure you know more about music than I do, being about five years younger. So no, I'm teasing. Quite a bit younger. Actually, I know 30 years younger. 30?

0:08:00 - Jason Snell
No, no, no, don't yeah, let's go with that years younger I was just a little.

0:08:06 - Leo Laporte
Uh, you were a lad during the screen savers when you'd appear on call for help yeah very very outside orbits, where the orbits take a lot longer than they do on earth. Yes, I am today on call for help. The four-year-old jace's stell will tell us right how to clean your mouth. Yeah, when I was, when I was a baby yep, that's totally, that's totally.

0:08:28 - Jason Snell
No, that's good. I mean johnny, johnny, I appreciate. Thank you for following me on apple music, I appreciate that I do, I trust my my daughter. One of my proudest things is that my daughter thinks I have a good taste in music, and that is how that is possible. I I don't know, but I won that one, so that's good, give her some time, dad, yeah I mean she's. She's in her 20s now.

0:08:48 - Andy Ihnatko
That's true yeah, or or either. Either way it speaks well of you, Jason, because either, like you have great taste in music that you're you've been able to share with your daughter and have that kind of bond, or you've raised a daughter that is amazingly empathic and says you know what it will make him make all will make him feel great if I say that I love his boogie woogie 1940 songs Either way.

0:09:10 - Leo Laporte
So the question that you highlighted, Andy, is so what song marks the time in your life working as Apple's head of design before Steve Jobs is back at Apple, to which Johnny says I chose a song that I think is sort of slightly angry, slightly sad, which I do think describes where I was. It's Simple Minds, don't you forget about me. Are they all fairly old songs? They say you lose Most of them. Are you get frozen in time in your musical tastes in your late 20s? But this, yeah, there's nothing. Is ivy new or no?

0:09:47 - Jason Snell
I don't know. Uh, that's apartment life. So that's 1997, that's a. That's relatively, I mean it's not.

0:09:53 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Jason Snell for the detail apartment life. It's um here.

0:09:57 - Jason Snell
Ivy is uh the other band that adam schlesinger, who was in fountains of wayne did it's uh, I love fountainsains of Wayne, so with a female vocalist and it's really good. Yeah, this is why I follow you on iTunes. Yeah, so somebody Johnny Ive works with was playing Apartment Life in 1997 exactly. Oh, what's that? Pick that up from the kids. So wonderful.

0:10:18 - Leo Laporte
Well, there you go. That was uh. That was our top story. Now it's all rumors. Actually, I had a great piece I found from arnoorg that answered a question. I've had a lot of time. Uh, this guy, arno, was in 1999, right about the same time as ivy uh was publishing her famous album what's the much mccallit apartment life? He was technical lead for the Finder, the OS X Finder, at Apple. He has a great story.

At the time, the Finder code base was eight years old, remember. It had come to them from next and it reached the end of its useful life. Making any changes to it required a huge engineering effort and any change usually broke two or three seemingly unrelated features. So for OS X, we decided to rewrite the Finder from scratch, and part of what they wanted to do is separate the user interface from the back end. The back end of the Finder enumerates files, watches for changes in the file system. Deals with metadata, including icon locations. Watches for changes in the file system. Deals with metadata, including icon locations, folder settings. The two components were known as Finder FE front end and Finder BE back end. However, we soon started realizing the Finder back end would be useful outside of the Finder. Therefore, this is something that didn't happen. A plan was hatched to someday make it available as a public API. Okay, since I had previously been responsible for naming icon services and navigation services, we decided to go with desktop services. Uh-oh, now we're starting to see. At the time we were also considering renaming the finder to desktop, hence the name of ds desktop services, underscore store, which stands for the desktop services store.

The dot hides it, which you probably know. Files begin with a dot aren't visible unless you turn that on. Personally, I don't think it's a great name. I wish we'd gone with something more descriptive, but it's too late for that and that's why. Oh, and it wasn't intended that there'd be a DS store in every gosh darn place on your Mac. If you hide, if you hide dot files. You may not know this, but as soon as you see the dot files, you go oh my God, there's DS stores. My sync thing is synchronizing DS stores. There's an unfortunate bug he says it's not fixed to this day. The results in an excessive creation of the dot ds store file. The file should only be created if the user makes adjustments to the view settings or sets a manual location for icons on a folder. Unfortunately no, every every folder's gonna get a dot ds store. So now you know and you can blame this guy, arno. Now you know why it happened. He actually has a pretty good blog of Apple lore.

0:13:09 - Jason Snell
This is a good window into that era in the late 90s right before as they were building the first versions of OS X, late 90s, in 2000, 2001, about all the different ways that they needed to justify and kind of like, fit together classic macOS concepts with Next Step, because Next Step was very Unix-y, much more than, and macOS wasn't at all the classic macOS, and they had to make some decisions. So some decisions that we now think of as innately Mac, like the dock, didn't exist in the old macOS. But then there were other things, like the menu bar, which did, and they had to decide, like, what to keep, what to add. Uh, the column, the multi-column browser was a next step thing that steve jobs really liked loved that, loved it.

0:13:55 - Leo Laporte
It's in the finder now, but it never was before.

0:13:57 - Jason Snell
It was list and icon view only they added that in and they had to do a bunch of yeah.

So they had to do a bunch of stuff where they're kind of like how do we reconcile these two different concepts of it's a Mac versus it's Next Step, which is, you know, next Step wasn't the branding, but it was the underlying architecture, and then Mac was the branding, and the identity of the vast majority of users who would be using this OS going forward were coming from the Mac side, because almost nobody used Next Step. So they had to make lots of weird decisions. You know, is there an Apple menu? They had it in the middle for a while of the menu bar, which is super weird. And then finally they're like okay, we're going to put it over on the left and it's what we now think of as the Apple menu, which is very different from what the classic macOS Apple menu was.

And they had to deal with things like uh, the type and creator, uh, the resource fork, the type and creator versus uh, file name extensions for uh, uh, for file type, lots of this stuff. And the ds store is a great little uh behind the scenes. This is a great story, leo, I really appreciate it of like, well, what do we do with this metadata? And they were like make a file, write a file, make a file, it's invisible, it'll be fine. And like there were thousands of decisions like this, some of which fell away because of this bug, ds store has stayed.

But it is fascinating because it is the maybe best, if not only, example of this two very strong OS traditions, both stemming from Steve Jobs, that in the year 2000, 99, 98, in there they had to make so many decisions about what that new Mac OS would be. And now it's 25 years later and it is. I mean, it's been around way longer than the original Mac OS at this point. But they had to make those weird decisions and some of them, like DS Store Store have. Just they never went away.

0:15:47 - Leo Laporte
Arno is Arno Gudahl, who started at Adobe, went to Apple and is now retired. I'm sure got some Apple stock options and traveling the world. He also writes about Steve Jobs. I didn't know this. He says Steve always had to have somebody escort him around the campus because he refused to carry a card key. So somebody always had to have somebody escort him around the campus because he refused to carry a card key, so somebody always had to let him in.

0:16:09 - Jason Snell
Sounds like him. That's very Steve Jobs.

0:16:11 - Leo Laporte
He also has an article about something I've never seen before the PenMac. This was PowerBook Duo era, and Arno, I guess, wrote the software for this tablet that never saw the light of a day. Project code was Penlight. Interestingly, in a little kind of coincidence, the photo here is from Marshan Wickery, the guy who Glenn Fleischman worked with to create that beautiful book Shift happens, shift happens.

0:16:38 - Jason Snell
yeah, great book.

0:16:40 - Leo Laporte
So I guess Marshan somewhere found one of these to write about it. Maybe it's from the book actually. Do you remember this, Andy? Did you know about the pen Mac?

0:16:49 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it was one of those ideas that was floating around. I remember of it. Also, I was actually trying to find it as you started talking, but one turned up on eBay or something and there's some YouTube videos of a guy who got it and restored it to actually working condition. Wow, that's cool and I'm going to see if I can find it.

0:17:08 - Leo Laporte
Apple canceled the project in August 93 in favor of the Newton. Yeah, arno says we were all sad, but that experiment showed the limitations of repurposing a traditional desktop user interface, a lesson Apple has not stopped learning, right. They don't want to put touch on the mac os.

0:17:28 - Jason Snell
they believe it should be a dedicated touch os yeah, also great little aside in here that they demoed this in 1993 to the guys from san diego at uh, it was the silicon beach software smart sketch which became future wave, which became future splash animator, became Future Splash Animator. I remember it, it was really a cool program and Adobe snatched or no, macromedia snatched it and renamed it to Flash.

0:17:53 - Alex Lindsay
Oh, my God.

0:17:54 - Jason Snell
But it was one of those things like if you use BarneyScanXP, you get to say forever I used Photoshop before it was Photoshop Yep. And this is just like that, which is, if you use Future Splash Animator, you can say I use Flash before. Everybody hated it.

0:18:14 - Leo Laporte
You know poor Flash, because in its early days it was amazing right. It was the only thing you could do on the web that would give you all this animation and liveliness.

0:18:18 - Andy Ihnatko
It was a solution to a real problem. It made the web something other than GIFs and text, and there's an entire legacy of gaming that happened because of Flash. It's not just about punching the monkey in a bad banner ad. I'm so glad that these things get preserved because again, it's like imagining a film format that made it incredibly influential movies. But because all that stock burned up, nobody can cite the original references anymore. It's it's. It's for as much as Steve jobs decided to rail against it because it was inconvenient. It was a very, very important part of history.

0:18:55 - Leo Laporte
We, as some of you know, we now have a actual chat in a variety of different locales because we are streaming not just to YouTube live and discord, but we're now also streaming to Kik Twitch, even Xcom. And we have somebody which is kind of interesting in our YouTube channel named Jonathan Gibson, who says he worked on the Pen Mac. Briefly, he says it cost too much and they had to wait until screens got cheaper, as in the iPad and the iPhone.

0:19:26 - Alex Lindsay
That's right. I think that one of the things that's interesting is when you see a lot of these innovations, and especially in the 90s, when you saw a lot of ideas that we're using now but they didn't quite make it out, and you realize how all the ingredients have to be in one place at one time, like it has to be. You know the pricing and the production and all the different pieces. You know the pricing and the production and all the different pieces, and a lot of times we see technologies that by themselves kind of grow up to be a little tree and then they die because the other nutrients weren't there to make it happen, it just wasn't the right time. And then they slowly, kind of oftentimes come back and we're like, why didn't we do it back then?

0:20:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, because exactly what he said, it was expensive and LCDs weren't where they are now, CDs weren't where they are now. There's a whole bunch of other things that needed to happen. Even the Newton was really more of an experiment than a useful tool. But you could kind of see in the Newton wow, there's something here. It's just not.

0:20:16 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like the Palm and the idea of well A the Newton is way too expensive, it's way too hard to develop software for, way too expensive to develop software for it. And so that's how, like Palm, or the precursors of Palm, like got in there and helped to bury Newton. Helped Newton help to show everybody that, wow, there really is something to a much more portable device than a laptop that you interact with with a pen, like if you get rid of the keyboard and open up that real estate for just more screen. There's a lot of potential there. Palm came in and said, yeah, but it can't be that, it can't be as expensive as that. And then they were well poised, because of expansion slots, to take advantage of mobile internet, as weak as it was. Once you had a PDA that could connect to the internet, once you could send not just text messages but emails, that really underscored that we need to make something like the Palm Pilot that is built around broadband. And then, when Wi-Fi came along, really Newton was so ahead of its time, a lot like the next cube, would prove to be exactly what the future computing was. But it existed in a time where it just wasn't relevant or you couldn't really take advantage of all the potential that was there. So it's again interesting to note the history, but also to note that the timing has to be right.

I mean getting back to that person who's restoring that PenMac, I was really excited once he got started to see what kind of software was on it and I was super, super disappointed. Got started to see what kind of software was on it and I was super, super disappointed that whatever state it was in when it I don't know whatever state it was in like when it left left hands was basically standard Mac OS with extensions to make the pen work as a mouse. And I don't and I don't know if that was like, if if I don't know if it got wiped in some point, somebody installed like new software or whatever. But if that was like if I don't know if it got wiped in some point, somebody installed like new software or whatever, but if that was what they were going to go with, yeah, there's no reason to believe that it would have ever succeeded, because this was an opportunity. This would have been an opportunity for apple to reimagine mac os as something that could work with touch or work with a stylus, as well as something else.

I mean I won't go. I won't go into it again, but I have so much admiration for material design on Android because they managed to make the kind of choices that say that when this app is being used on a phone, it looks like a phone OS that's being used for touch. When it's on a laptop sort of thing, or when you attach a keyboard and mouse to a tablet, without making any changes whatsoever, it feels instinctively like a mouse and keyboard operating system. That's the sort of thing that Apple could have done. That's the thing they would have to have done to make something like that reasonable.

0:22:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah. This is Thomas Gilley's YouTube channel. He only has 19 subscribers, but this is a video from 2012 showing exactly what you just described, which is the Mac OS of the time, with a layer, a touch layer. This is why Apple doesn't do it, I think, because the targets have to be adjusted, everything has to be adjusted. This is not. This is made for a mouse, very clearly. Actually, if you search for PenMac, there's quite a few videos about PenMacs. That's kind of neat.

0:23:30 - Andy Ihnatko
I wonder how many of them they made, because that implies that there were, because the ones that we're seeing are of as a physical object. They look like very finished objects. You know like they look like? Oh well, yeah, did you forget that Apple actually sold a couple hundred thousand of these? Because, yeah, they're still out there. They don't look like rough adaptations of a PowerBook Duo. It looks like it could have been a shippable, finished sort of thing. Inside, when they take this apart, it does look pretty rough. There are a whole bunch of bodge wires. Let's just get this to fit inside the case that was designed so well, but on the outside it does look like something that would, when you go to sears where's which is where you want to buy apples that slimmed you would want to take a look at it and pick it up and would, of course, be broken yeah, tyler, who knows nothing and is our youtube channel, says he thinks there's a modified power book 5xx, uh, which it looks like a little bit right yeah yeah, the one, the one that I saw has actually has the duo dock at the bottom of it oh

there you go so I don't know if that's a guy I have. I obviously don't have as much information as he does, but that's but from the video it makes sense because the duo was designed to be slim enough. Form factor you could actually slide it into a slot like a floppy disk and connect it to the monitor and the keyboard later on so we are so happy that all of you are watching live mac break weekly.

0:24:51 - Leo Laporte
Of course, you can watch after the fact as well on the twit network at twit.tv/mbw or subscribe in your favorite podcast player, but we like having this live audience. So thank you to all of you joining us on the various platforms. This is something we're going to start doing now, I think, for every every live show. I'm hoping. Anyway, we'll see, thanks to the folks at Restream making this possible. Our show today. We'll get back to more with our guests Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, guests. Did I say guests? You're not our guests, you're our best friends and buddies, our cohosts. Oh yeah, Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, Alex lindsey.

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All right, now we got to talk about this bad stuff, the Epic stuff, all right, all right. So Apple has. It's a kind of an off and on thing. Uh, epic complained last week oh, apple won't let us be on the you know app store in the eu, even though they're supposed to, because they say our buttons look too much like them. Then apple says, okay, fine, and approves it. Uh, they approve epic games. Uh, it's not on the app store. It's an actual store, right? I don't know, we don't live in Europe. Yeah, it's a store, and then Epic is still pissed off. So I don't, that's Epic, isn't it?

0:30:55 - Alex Lindsay
In a nutshell, Well, I think the bottom line is Apple keeps on dragging its feet and Epic is hyperbolic. Right?

0:31:00 - Leo Laporte
They want to move move, move.

0:31:02 - Alex Lindsay
Epic has learned we're just going to yell at the top of our lungs all the time and so eventually they're going to find what most parents find is, if you yell at the top of your lungs all the time, you have to yell at the top of your lungs all the time, but they are yeah, they're hyperbolic about everything. Apple is going slower than they could go on all of those things. I mean, I think that the button issue, I think, is really Apple not wanting it to look like their site, to make sure that if something goes wrong, you're really clear where you were.

0:31:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but Epic says hey look, everybody uses the word install, everybody uses the words in-app purchases. Apple's complaining about that. Those are naming conventions. Apple says you can't make certain buttons and labels similar to those in the app store. Uh, you know, not having seen what they're proposing or what apple's rejected rejection says, it's hard for us to guess. This is a reuters it does.

0:31:57 - Andy Ihnatko
It does sound like um, as much as, as much as I'd like to think that this is for from a, from a.

I like a good rhubarb, especially when a rhubarb can escalate into a donnybrook I'm a big fan of that.

But like this just sounds like they find themselves stuck in the usual miasma of app store approvals, which is Apple rejected my app for a reason that doesn't make sense, because all these they've approved other apps that do the same thing, but now that for some reason, because somebody didn't get enough protein at lunch or whatever it's been rejected for that reason and I have to keep resubmitting until they decide that I've had a good steak for lunch and I'm open-minded to interpret this rule more broadly.

This is something that everybody seems to go through, so I don't know if it is malice I'm guessing it isn't but it really is illust. Illustrating once again one of the big problems of the app store, which is it can seem so arbitrary and so frustrating when you've got so much lined up with. We chose to launch in July for a very, very good reason, and now we can't launch in July for reasons that Apple won't explain to us, and we don't know when we're going to be able to launch, so we're missing out on all these opportunities we thought we were going to have by picking our date.

0:33:11 - Jason Snell
So it may be a foo for awe or a kerfuffle.

0:33:12 - Leo Laporte
We don't know, but if you're going to make pie, use rhubarb?

0:33:17 - Jason Snell
We're not quite sure yet. We're not listening. So I think Alex honestly this could be a very short show, because I think Alex encapsulated it perfectly which is Epic is going to complain and make a big deal They've seen some results of that, although they've also lost a bunch of court cases but they're going to make a thing of it and the other side of it is that Apple is dragging its feet. My problem with this is the global problem here, which is when Apple introduced its whole cryptographic system of verifying apps and signing them and approving them through Gatekeeper, this whole notarization process and they did it for the Mac, like five years ago, six years ago. They said at the time this is not a way for us to get the Mac App Store to exist outside the Mac App Store on the Mac, this is just a security scam. Now for Europe, for iOS, they said, okay, we're going to have to do something like that notarization for Europe but we have to do more than we do on the Mac, because it's not the Mac, it's iOS and there's a higher level of security. So we're going to do additional human level security checking and approval and it's going to take a little bit longer, but it's all that the context was supposed to be. It's notarization. It's for a very specific, limited scope that they're allowed by the regulators without being a gatekeeper.

And my concern, if you listen to Riley Testwood of AltStore say that they've had Apple dragging its feet on a bunch of things, if you listen to the developers of those emulators who said that Apple refused to notarize those emulators for the EU and now for Epic, what I see is a pattern of behavior which is Apple turning this thing that is supposed to be a neutral, security-focused thing notarization which is a very good system to keep their users safe and trying to import more arbitrary app store policies into it.

And the danger is that what's going to happen is that and maybe Apple wants this, I don't know is that the European regulators are going to say you know, you've ruined, congratulations Apple, you've ruined notarization. And without notarization it really is more dangerous, vastly more dangerous than the notarization system that Apple uses just for the Mac. So that's what bugs me about it is look, epic is going to do their thing. They're going to be annoying, they're going to complain about everything. It's self-serving. I am a little worried about the fact that Apple is taking this notarization process and applying seemingly arbitrary app store kind of judgments when it's not supposed to be that.

0:36:04 - Leo Laporte
It's. You know I am a little sympathetic to Apple because their trade dress is, of course, very important to them. Remember last week, the kerfuffle Tiff Donnybrook over Figma, figma AI? Andy Allen, who is the guy behind Not Boring Software, asked Figma's AI designer to design a Not Boring Weather app and it looked, you know, almost identical to Apple's weather app, so much so that Figma decided to pull the tool. I don't know if Apple complained or not, but you know it's an issue. On the other hand, you can also make the case with this weather app, just as Epic has that. Well, there's kind of a standard for weather apps. I mean, you're showing the temperature, you're showing the range. I mean there's not a lot of variation. There might be kind of a standard, kind of natural way to show weather.

0:37:00 - Jason Snell
You don't want people to have to do everything unnaturally because Apple's the first to do it naturally or has trademarked the natural expression of something and it sounds like this is things like uh, like an install or a buy or a an open button that you would find in in an app store or an app marketplace and that epic has said they're not trying to make people think they're in, you know, trick them into being in the app store and of course you've got to go through a whole long stretch of things to install on an alternative app marketplace.

So there really shouldn't be a lot of misunderstanding going on there. And again, I think it's fair that maybe Epic is up to doing, you know, weird ploys here and that Apple is being more of a stickler than maybe they should because they don't trust them at all. I think those are absolutely reasonable. I just it just bugs me this idea that the whole purpose of this alternative app stores and and all of that is to get out, to let people, if they choose, get outside of Apple's system of approval, and what we see is Apple saying actually no, it doesn't. And the problem with that is that the regulators can come in and say, well, that you can't, you literally you can't do it that way.

0:38:13 - Alex Lindsay
But I think that also, I think I think there is probably an effort by Epic. I mean, you can use the same words, but how the button looks and how it operates and everything else feels different between many, many. Does apple own rounded corners? No, no.

But but the point is, is that I remember that they did sorry samsung apple uh, right, uh, I think wants it to be very clear so that you don't suddenly you know there's a lot to get into that that thing, but it could get to a point where you don't remember where you bought it right, and what apple probably knows is that the type of the type of developer that is going to develop outside of the Apple.

You know, app store experience is probably going to be a little bit more edgy and there's probably going to be more.

You know, either Epic is going to have to clamp down pretty hard or people are going to get taken advantage of, or things are going to happen bad, and I think Apple wants to make sure that people are really clear that they were in you were in over here and so that when you have that bad experience, you'll connect it to that app store. I think that that's what Apple's trying to. I think if Epic had made buttons that looked completely different than the app store, apple would have let it go through without stopping it, because I think they just want it to look different. They just want it to look different so that you're clear, that when you get screwed up by it, that you're clear of where you got screwed up by it, you know, and that because Apple, I guarantee, is planning PR around it Like it's going to be a problem and they're planning to bash this store the moment anything major happens with an app on the store.

0:39:37 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's exactly what I was saying it's difficult.

0:39:40 - Alex Lindsay
I guess Any of us would do that, maybe not anyone. You've got to protect your trademarks. If you told me to do something that I don't want to do, I would do as slow as possible. I am not like, oh, you told me something I really really don't want to do, so now I'm going to do it. Everyone who pays their taxes goes. Oh, I think I'm just going to pay all the taxes that the IRS told me to do. I'm not going to anyone to try to figure out any way to pay any less taxes, because I want to pay all the taxes.

0:40:11 - Jason Snell
I mean, that's the same as everyone, no one wants to do more than they have to, and Apple's going to keep on going.

0:40:13 - Alex Lindsay
I'm not going to do more than I have to, and that's what you can be guaranteed is that when you're telling someone to do something that they don't want to do, they're not going to do more than they have to, and so the government can try to do it. But the problem, the government's going to find out and what they already found out is that you start micromanaging all this stuff and Apple can just keep on. I mean, like you know, you look at the AI stuff Many companies do not release many products in many regions for many reasons, and so it's going to be very hard for them to just go. Well, you have to release everything that you make into the EU, and so all of this starts to get sticky. Make into the EU, and so all of this starts to get sticky, and the bottom line is that the EU and Epic have got their hands into this gooey mess and they're trying to figure out how to get out of it, and it's going to be it's going to be very hard for it to actually get somewhere.

0:40:55 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, it's just to me, it's just the really natural amount of difficulty when you go from having no regulation whatsoever to suddenly having rules that a company having to operate by rules that they did not create themselves based on, like what their own internal management and production is set up to do. So, yeah, there are going to be some problems. There's going to be some problems with a company like Apple legitimately not knowing if something they plan to do is legit or not according to these new rules. Or just, I'm going to try to declare my new $10,000 sofa as a dependent and now it's up to the IRS to determine, to find out that little Satie is not actually a three-year-old child, that it's actually a sofa.

I think Apple is going to try to do kind of both and you're absolutely right.

I mean, they're very well motivated to try to do stuff like this because, despite the fact that the EU is definitely honking down their snorkel in a way that they are not going to appreciate, they are also not trying to develop a new feature that their customers have been raging at them to give them. It's not like well, look, we have to have this new camera feature out because people want to be able to record 4K, 60 frame per second. Video, so we have to do what we have to do to make this happen. And video, so we have to do what we have to do to make this happen, whereas Apple knows that, look, if we drag our feet to make sure that we can pursue, maintain as many of our own objectives as possible, including making sure that everybody who uses our phones knows the difference between using the Apple app store and anything that is not the Apple app store, they're definitely going to go through that, through that, through that procedure, which is not something that I fault them for at all.

0:42:47 - Leo Laporte
Can we make Hawking Down there Snorkel the new Hawk-twa-twa. I thought I should be the new one.

0:42:54 - Alex Lindsay
I just want to say that's a title. We have a title Hawking Down there Snorkel.

0:42:58 - Leo Laporte
Did you make that up, Andy, or is that a common term around the world?

0:43:03 - Andy Ihnatko
No, that is from like a season two or season three episode of mystery science theater 3000, in which in which the the mads call in and and joel's on, the mad scientists are hot, barking down my snorkel and then like answers the call it's a really good, it's a very evocative, uh image.

0:43:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yes, I like it. Uh. By the way, credit to dylan field, the ceo of figma, who immediately I mean, obviously they don't want to piss off human designers, that's their business, but they immediately took it down, he apologized, he took responsibility for it, um, so there's probably a couple of figma users at apple yeah so yeah, but know we, didn't hear that Apple of any official Apple complaint. I think he's failed to respond immediately to the to Andy Allen. I'm sorry.

0:43:52 - Alex Lindsay
He's probably sensitive to it though.

Oh, of course he's probably sensitive, like hey, we've got X number of users at Apple. Let's not do this. Like whatever we're doing here, like you know, and it's easy, it's very easy for companies to. You know, someone lower down is just there in the tunnel of just doing the thing that they're doing and probably not even thinking about that, and it gets up to the CEO and the CEO will be like why were we doing this? And you know, it's just, it's just one of those. This happens all the time.

0:44:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, here's, just in case you were curious, Andy Allen's tweet. On the left, this is the official Apple app, and on the right, this is the official apple app, and on the right, the three different attempts he made with the figma ai. Honestly, though, I mean, if you've got this form factor and you're going to be telling people the weather, I don't have to. I mean, how many different ways can you do it?

yeah, so, but uh but to figure it, they didn't want to they said no, no, we're going to fix that and they've pulled it down so carrot will tell you dirty jokes and then give you the weather.

0:44:51 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah it'll make you feel bad about yourself.

0:44:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly I have set carrot to be as an absolutely obnoxious. I have it turned all the way up, all the way I can't have audio on.

0:45:01 - Alex Lindsay
I cannot have audio on when I go to the carrot app, if anyone's around, because I don't know what's going to come out of its mouth. You know like it's, like it's one of those problem children.

0:45:09 - Leo Laporte
It must know we're talking about it, cause I just opened it and it said it's sunny. Enjoy, that's not the carrot I know and love. You know what else you won't be able to get in Apple's app store? Uh, in Russia, you won't be able to get 25 new vpn services. Apple has pulled them down, according to interfax, following a request by Russia's state communications watchdog, ross komnadzor. Uh, the fcc of russia. So, uh, this has happened in china and it? Uh it's. It's happened, according to, uh, interfax. Demand for VPN. Actually, there's a Reuters story. Demand for VPN services soared in Russia right after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine and at that time, the authorities restricted access to some western social media. Obviously, people in Russia wanted to see it, so they launched their VPNs. Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has already blocked access to some large VPNs, but these 25 apps on the App Store, you know, gave people an out.

0:46:14 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, the maker of one of them is called Red Shield and it's not a Russian-owned company. Obviously, they wouldn't be able to operate that way, but it's not like the board is run by like Russian nationals. Nationals or russian expats, uh, and they, they posted they're, they're pretty salty about it. Their, their explanation is that, like uh, uh, roskan, roskan, vat for roskan, not so Andy, you're a russian heritage.

0:46:39 - Leo Laporte
You should be able to say it perfectly carpathian.

0:46:42 - Andy Ihnatko
Russian it's different we're the we're the, we're the, we're the gentle people who make horses out of cheese okay, we're. And buy eggs? We don't.

0:46:50 - Leo Laporte
You know, we're not into impression quite so much whenever I have to pronounce a russian word, I just put on the russian egg. I sound like boris bednov, and then it comes out normal russ, come not zor I do.

0:46:59 - Andy Ihnatko
I do talk a good game because a long, long, long, long, long time ago, as as a prank, I learned how to sing the Soviet national anthem, wow. And so whenever I need to fake Russian, I'll say so you don't know Russian. You don't know Russian. You don't know Russian. You don't know Russian. You don't know Russian, you don't know Russian. It was basically to make someone.

0:47:21 - Leo Laporte
I was a teenager and I thought that it would make someone feel very, very bad if I said that. But anyway, the only Russian I knew was from Yuri Gagarin, sputnika Vostok. Gavrit, moskva. Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, sputnika Vostok. I don't know.

0:47:37 - Jason Snell
Yanni Gavarud Paruski. It means I don't speak Russian.

0:47:40 - Leo Laporte
That's a useful one. That's a useful one. That's a useful one. Nyet, nyet, yes, nyet, that's what I do.

0:47:47 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, I also know because of Tom Clancy novels. I also know a very, very bad curse in Russian oh good, thank you, tom.

0:47:55 - Alex Lindsay
I will not say that. Evidently I'm told that if you just walk around saying I'm in the machine, it's a popular one.

0:48:03 - Andy Ihnatko
I got that. Thank you for the reference. I'll give you a receipt that your reference was gotten by somebody, but yeah, so basically they're pretty salty about it, saying that Russia was not able to shut them down on their own as much as they tried by trying to shut down their access points, and so this must have been a specific interaction between the government and Russia. On the blog post they say they I think they quote or reproduce Apple's email to them saying that our app quote solicits, promotes or encourages criminal or clearly reckless behavior unquote. And so Red Shield is saying Apple is actively supporting I'm quoting here, actively supporting an authoritarian regime. This is not just reckless but a crime against civil society.

0:48:46 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's a good question. I mean, Apple's got to follow the laws of the country that it's in.

0:48:52 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's a hard line to walk.

I think that every time that Apple exceeds a request like that, they do have to be called out about it, it does have to be acknowledged, have to be acknowledged.

But even like, human rights organizations say that if Apple not specifically about Apple, but they've spoken about this idea about if a communications company like is being told to censor content to users in a country where people are not totally free by our free speech standards, it's not necessarily the right thing for the company to say well, guess what?

We're not doing this anymore. Because we stand for things, because, again, according to human rights organizations, they're saying that a company like Apple can actually still serve a very, very important role to those users in that country who are still reliant on their communications infrastructure. Maybe they won't be able to access a VPN, but they will still be able to talk to each other via messages, via whatever other tools that the government is not necessarily clamping down on yet. So again, always, always, always. The only time it really gets up my nose when Apple does something like this is when it's bad timing and it happens like two weeks after some executive has had some sort of interview with the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, about how oh those, google, facebook, they don't care about privacy and personal rights. We are the only people who care about that. It's like, ok, you can tone it down a little bit Again.

If you really believe that privacy is, like, sacrosanct and non-negotiable, you should basically tell China and Turkey and Russia and these other companies to go stick it. I think it's more likely to simply say that there are times where we have to play ball in order to serve our users that we want to serve, and there are times when it's a terrible situation and we really do have to come out Like they're not. I'm sure that if, like if China or Russia said by the way, Apple, you now have to introduce a new version of iOS for Russian phones, that's, iPhones that allows the government to eavesdrop on anything at any time, that would be the OK. Guess what? We're taking our ball and going home Because if they, if they acceded to that, they would be like OK, we are evil, we just like Russian money.

0:51:03 - Jason Snell
The difference is that between Russia and China here is that Apple already pulled out of Russia, and I think I would say, yeah, they need to follow the law if they're going to continue to maintain, like the App Store in Russia.

But I would say the decision to maintain the App Store in Russia is a decision to not to do something, do a solid for Putin. It's a decision to support their users. Right, they stopped selling iPhones. They pulled out of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, but they do continue to maintain the store. It does allow them, the users, to still use their iPhones and have them be useful and in doing so, they have to comply with the laws. So when the when the Russian government says a VPN is criminal activity, they had to say, ok, it's criminal activity. But I think Andy makes a good, a good point that their alternative was to walk away from those people and they they have chosen apparently not to do that, and I commend them for that as well as from walking away from Russia in general and whatever money was in that market after the invasion.

0:52:12 - Leo Laporte
Compare it to what's happening in China. So remember, Google walked away from China and Microsoft has now told all of its Chinese staff that they may not use Android phones because of the inaccessibility of the Play Store in China. They feel it's insecure. They're requiring, as of September, that all Chinese Microsoft employees use iPhones. Go ahead, Andy.

0:52:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Specifically because they deploy apps to their employees for security and privacy and they're not going to trust any of the Android app stores that are operating in China. For reasons Right, and because there's no official app store for Google in China, they're saying nope, you can't use anything. Congratulations, you just got yourself a free iPhone 15. Pick it up at the desk on your way in or out, I imagine September is maybe because the 16 is coming out.

0:53:03 - Alex Lindsay
Hey, we can all upgrade to 16.

0:53:04 - Leo Laporte
Microsoft says any staff using Android headsets, including devices made by Huawei or Xiaomi both the number, I think the number one and two Android devices in China will be provided with an iPhone 15. It's a one-time purchase. You're going to have to buy it. The company will make iPhones available for collection at various hubs across China, including Hong Kong, which is interesting because Google services China, including Hong Kong, which is interesting because Google services are available in Hong Kong. Employees may continue to use Android phones for personal use. This is Microsoft more focusing on its own security, which, frankly, has been pretty awful.

0:53:38 - Alex Lindsay
And I think the thing when we thought that the government was overreacting to Huawei maybe not, maybe not like maybe not like. There's a lot of concern that you see keep on rolling out of like hey, let's not have any huawei hardware in our, in our system.

0:53:55 - Andy Ihnatko
So that was more about 5g networks because they were like a major international provider they voluntarily pulled the phone.

0:54:02 - Leo Laporte
See, it wasn't the government.

0:54:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, but but that's, that's another interesting part of all this because, like, uh, because trade embargoes started hitting during the Trump administration, it really crippled a company like Huawei, because now they can't they can't do business with American companies, they can't get access to chip manufacturing technologies, or that they can't. They can't basically license these, these designs, so they can't manufacture chips that are nearly as good as anything you'd find on a flagship Samsung, google or Apple phone. But now they're starting to sort of pull themselves together. Huawei, for instance, is doing kind of a double whammy where they and I think they just released betas to certain developers a brand new operating system that has no code whatsoever from Android or any other source, entirely self-created, with an entirely new kernel that they can basically do whatever they want with, because, again, that involves no other technology. It will be maintained exclusively inside China with its own app stores and all that sort of stuff. Also, importantly, it's designed kind of like on the Apple Silicon model, where we can't get access to like two and three nanometer manufacture processes. So we have optimized this operating system so that it will run well on new style processors that were manufactured with old style manufacturing technologies.

So we could find it. I mean, they're still kind of really hamstrung with AI because they can't do AI processing very, very well, but we could find ourselves in a place where, in five years time, there is a very, very vibrant third platform that nobody outside of China would ever use but inside China might even be. I have, obviously I haven't used Honor Next it's called Honor Next, I think the operating system, obviously. I've never used it. I've seen video demos of it, but you're building something from the ground up with no, without any baggage from previous designs. It might be actually something pretty good that might be enviable in five years, maybe.

0:55:57 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, maybe I'm saying I'm saying traditionally, traditionally, isolation is not improved innovation, like you know, like that's that tends not.

Those two things tend not to go together well. So I think that the problem is, by cutting themselves off from the rest of the world and Russia's done a little bit of the same thing they're putting themselves on an outside lane. It doesn't mean that they can't keep up, but it's a lot harder because there's all this innovation that's happening everywhere else that isn't going to be happening there, and the Chinese can steal as much as they want from our technology, but at the same time they still have some fundamental infrastructural issues that they're going to have to deal with. Then they're probably going to make it hard, you know. So them separating themselves out from this may not have the positive effect that they want. It gives the government more control, because the government needs more control, because the sand is sliding out from under them. So that's the key to the operation there is that the government wants to make sure that they can control the information, so no one understands what's actually happening there.

0:56:54 - Andy Ihnatko
And, just to make sure we're being clear about this, these moves aren't them isolating themselves. It's that okay, we can't get access to the deals and the technologies that we used to be able to have access to because of a trade war between these two countries, so we have to start doing things internally. But that's also backed up by I haven't read it in a couple months, so my memory is a little bit foggy, but they produced kind of an amazing document in 2019, I think that was a matter of policy, but policy with a certain amount of grandeur about it, with all the positive and negative associations with grandeur, saying that we want to be a great country and great countries Don't just simply like buy things that have already been developed by other countries. Great countries develop things on their own that are worthy of exporting and worthy of their own people to use, and for that reason, we are putting a really big, high priority on making sure that we can develop our own technologies in-house. So it's not so much we are shunning all influences from outside of our borders. A part of it is because of reality and diplomacy, but also it seems to be a national priority, and so, as you point out, just because they can't officially get access to manufacturing technologies and patents doesn't mean that they're not going to get them. So they're still going to be informed.

But you are right, they do have a very uphill way to go.

But as did Apple when they decided that we are going to create our own operating system, we're going to create a Mac OS X, we're going to create a brand new phone from scratch. It's like once you get and it took the iPhone a long long. I'm not not I'm not saying that these two are absolutely 100% compatible, but just as a sort of thing where there were a few years in which, wow, the iPhone is kind of lame. I mean, the people who like it have really good reasons for liking it but wow, this is kind of a lame, slow phone that can't even cut, copy and paste. But eventually it gets really really good. So that's why I'm saying I'm really keen to see what Honor Next is going to be like in five years' time, once the government has the ability to encourage local developers to make sure that whatever app you're making for iOS or Android also make it for honor, because we think that this we like the cut of this company's jib and we'd like to promote it as much as possible.

0:59:18 - Leo Laporte
Let's take a little break. You're watching Mac Break Weekly Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell. We've got lots more to come, but first a word from our sponsor, Fastmail. For years uh, more than a decade I've been using Fastmail and I have said in all that time I've said if you care about email for yourself, your family or your business, why are you using free email services? Because free email ain't ain't really free there. You're paying for it, maybe in ways you wish you wouldn't ain't really free. You're paying for it maybe in ways you wish you wouldn't.

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According to benchmarks now, June 18th was the day, or July 18th, June 18th, June 18th was the day that these Copilot Plus PCs with the Snapdragon Elite processor came out. Now we've seen quite a few benchmarks. So do they live up to the claim? Remember, Qualcomm said they are going to beat the MacBook Air. Right now it looks like that's true, but according to benchmarks by the Verge, while the new Microsoft laptops, including their own Surface, do outperform the latest Air, including Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung but when it comes to the MacBook Pro, not quite so fast. This is what the Verge said. This is the fiercest Microsoft has been able to compete with MacBooks in price, performance and battery life. While Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips don't exactly outright beat Apple's M3, 8-core and 10-core variants in every single one of our benchmarks, they could make AMD and Intel scramble to catch up to another competitor. I think that that's very clear, Certainly what Paul Theriot and Richard Campbell have been saying on Windows Weekly. These are very impressive laptops. Should Apple be worried?

1:05:02 - Andy Ihnatko
I wouldn't say worried, because no one's going to the reasons why people don't switch from Macs to Windows has nothing to do with. It's not speed, it's not speed. It's not speed, it's not. Oh, I can't get a MacBook Air style laptop. It is a problem for Apple in trying to get people to switch from Windows to Mac. I think Because, man, if you're talking about a problem that people have every single day before this new CPU strategy, it's like why are my laptops running so hot? Why are they so noisy? Why are they so big? Why does the battery not not not last more than like five or six hours? If you can suddenly say congratulations, you now have everything that you might have admired about a MacBook Air, but you can still run Windows, you can still have all of your software, you don have to migrate anything. You've just lost someone who's transitioned, who might have been able to like make a switch the next time. They have to put down a fifty hundred dollars or a thousand bucks for a laptop I mean I would say this is good news.

1:06:01 - Leo Laporte
This means that our friends on the windows side can get a good battery life. Finally, less fan, less fan usage, less overheating. They can get a performant laptop that's thin and light and if you want to run Windows now, you have a good choice to run Windows. I think that's great.

1:06:19 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't want to, but Everybody like it's the Toyota Corolla, it's the Kia, it's the Hyundai, these basic, like sedan-like laptops that are just they're fast enough, they're cheap enough, they're light enough, the battery lasts long enough, and that's what most people are buying. And so if they can't yet compete with Apple's top of the line, that doesn't matter, Because, again, the person who has to carry a laptop from their office into a conference room, onto an airplane, into a hotel room, to another conference room, those are the features that make people want to get. Oh God, I don't care how difficult it is, give me one of those tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little MacBook Airs, because I have had it with this Dell. It's just driving me, it is a pain point every single day of my life.

1:07:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it does put price pressure on Apple because, you know, I've been looking at, like the Lenovo Slim 7X $1,300. Well, for one thing, they go from 16 gigs of RAM to 32 gigs of RAM for like $60, $67. It's like, oh, you can do that Really, and Apple people go, no, that should be at least $1,000. And they go from 512 gigs of storage to a terabyte of storage for an equally small amount For $1,300, you can get a very nice terabyte, 32 gigs of RAM, snapdragon-based Windows on ARM, very thin and light laptop from Lenovo. That puts a little pressure on Apple, doesn't it.

1:07:48 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that's puts a little pressure on Apple, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean the the. The world is full of people that when they order a Coke in a restaurant and the waiter says is Pepsi, okay, they don't care.

1:07:57 - Leo Laporte
And for I'm one of those people, but I feel like you're a Coke guy. I go with your rhubarb pie yeah.

1:08:03 - Andy Ihnatko
I will, yeah, I I. I prefer Coke. I will. I will fountain drinks. My rule rule is that we're okay, there's a, there's enough. Okay, what do you do?

1:08:13 - Leo Laporte
alex, do you say when somebody says no coke, pepsi, do you say I say water yeah, really, oh no, I'm totally.

1:08:19 - Alex Lindsay
You offer me pepsi, I'll be like I'll have water. Thanks, that's great. Wow, no, like I'm not, there's not, I would never, and it's just it, just it, literally I just I just they're not the same, they're not the same.

1:08:31 - Leo Laporte
How about? How about heinz versus uh, ketchup versus hunts? Do you have a strong opinion on that?

1:08:39 - Alex Lindsay
no, generally I would prefer heinz. I'm more like Andy here. I would prefer heinz ketchup but you'll take.

1:08:45 - Andy Ihnatko
You know, like, give me red something red.

1:08:47 - Alex Lindsay
Let's make it funny thing is, is that I very rarely use it, because I mostly eat my French fries with mayonnaise. Who doesn't? I don't care.

1:08:56 - Andy Ihnatko
That's gross. I want to refer our listeners back to the start of the show, where he said that when there's no news this is why the show goes through.

Let me make a distinction. It's like if you offer me a Coke or a Pepsi in a bottle, or Coke or a Pepsi in a can, yes, I absolutely prefer a Coke. However, once it's a fountain drink, there are so many variables in how crusty and bad it can be. I feel as though I'm not going to be picky about that. It's like do they clean the hoses? Do they clean the?

1:09:33 - Leo Laporte
pipelines.

1:09:35 - Andy Ihnatko
Are they cheaping out by giving you more water than syrup? How good is the ice? That's the point which I'll say. You know what, I'm not going to be fussy about it.

1:09:43 - Alex Lindsay
And I say all this, but I drink soda maybe once every, I know.

1:09:47 - Leo Laporte
I never do I love. All I drink is water.

1:09:49 - Alex Lindsay
It's a sick, it's a dirty pleasure, it's a secret, ill dirty pleasure, but I will have a Mexican Coke every once in a while.

1:09:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh good God. My dad conditioned us when we were kids because he would do chicken pizza night, in which we can get a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a large pepperoni pizza and a liter of Coke pizza and a liter of coke.

1:10:10 - Alex Lindsay
And now I and I got conditioned like that's what? And now kentucky fried. Now, a bucket of kentucky fried chicken is like half of your salary.

1:10:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh, forget it, I'm not eating kentucky fried chicken, believe me. So back to the apple news. Yeah, although frankly I think the half of the audience would prefer we go down this rat hole.

1:10:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah I'm saying. I'm saying that the apples apples biggest advantage is that they have something that is unique. It's it's such a separate experience from Windows, from top to bottom. It's not just oh wow, I like, I like good industrial design, so that's why I prefer Apple. No, from top to bottom, inside and out. It's such a different and mentally incompatible experience that if you have that that's why I said Coke versus Pepsi If you have a preference, you cannot take a Windows laptop over a Mac.

However, most of the people that are just again, they're focused on what they need to do with their laptop. That's when it gets kind of itchy, because those are always the kind of things that those of us who like Macs have a hard time defending. Like well, why wouldn't you buy a laptop where you can upgrade the RAM later on? Why wouldn't you be able to replace the storage if you want? Why, if HDMI output without a dongle is important, why wouldn't you be able to buy one that's like that?

Why wouldn't there be like many competing designs all trying to earn your trust and your loyalty and your dollars? Why would you simply take what one company gives you and if you and if you don't, and if you don't have the attraction to mac that we have. It might seem kind of silly to spend, as you say, a lot of extra money for a terabyte of storage, when why am I spending this much money? I can get so much? This is the I'll wrap it up, but this is this is like the reason why, like the last last time I bought like a flagship phone it was you know. I will switch from.

1:11:53 - Leo Laporte
Android to iPhone, pixel 6 or Pixel 7, yeah, Pixel 6 Pro.

1:11:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I will switch back anytime that I, every time I buy, I shop every single model that's out there, and a big part of it when I bought this one was I can get this with a terabyte for like a their top of the line flagship phone from Google for like $200 less than an iPhone with a large screen and a terabyte of storage, and I would much rather have the terabyte of storage than, in my case, the difference between Android and iOS. So it does become a factor.

1:12:26 - Alex Lindsay
And iOS. So it does become a factor, I think, when people ask those questions. I think if you ask a series of questions and you derived whether a person values time or money, you could probably have 60, 70% accuracy on who's going to buy what, right? If you value time, you'll tend to buy Apple products and it's not everyone. But if you value time, I bet you lean towards Apple products. And if you value money, you lean towards Windows and Android products. And it's just a personality trait there that I think that they kind of lean towards each other.

I just don't know a lot of people who are that I know that are using. If you talk to them about what they're saving, usually it's money. And if you talk to people Apple products, they just want it to work. Like, hey, I'm doing a bunch of other things, I just wanted to do the thing. I don't care about change. I'm never going to change the RAM. You know I'm never going to do these other things. You know it's just and it's not. Again, I wouldn't say that it's 100%. I would say it's like a 60%, like the needle goes one way or the other, but I think that that and my wife still uses a Mac. So it's a little different, because my wife can tell you the cheapest gas anywhere we live and I can tell you every gas station with a right turn in and a right turn out.

1:13:35 - Andy Ihnatko
I'll only speak to myself, but, like, although I definitely perceive a difference between Windows and macOS, the way you say, I'm still a regular iPhone user, and it's not just oh well, this one's $200 less, so I'll buy this one because I want as much storage as possible. In my opinion, ios is no better than Android taken as a whole. There are things about the ways that Android works that I prefer over the way that iOS does it. As you acknowledge, it's not a 100% thing, but I would just want to mention that there are ways in which Apple really needs to move things forward with the iPhone that they're not really doing. There are things I would never.

I mean right now, as we speak, I cannot believe the fact that I've got my iPad Pro and I'm just effortlessly using it as a second display for my MacBook, and that's just a feature that I got for free and it works perfectly. There are some growing pains with it, but now I just trust that it works. I don't even question it whatsoever. That's not an experience I get with Windows, but I don't have those kinds of experiences between the iPhone and Android. If anything, there are things I can do about my Android that just it drives me up a tree. That I can't do it on my iPhone. So it's, I think. I really think that Apple should be a little bit more daring with the iPhone.

1:15:01 - Alex Lindsay
And the problem is is that people like me will watch on. In September I will watch and I will wait for them to talk about the camera. Like that's all, the only reason I'm upgrading or not upgrading is the camera. Like I'm just waiting to see. Like did you give me some new features? And if you didn't give me new features, I might skip a year. You know like. You know like it's little weird things.

1:15:17 - Leo Laporte
So, I use continuity all the time, where I'll copy something on an iPad or an iPhone and then, without any hesitation, just paste it in on the Mac, and it's little things like that ecosystem, that is that is so amazing?

1:15:30 - Alex Lindsay
sure?

1:15:30 - Jason Snell
but I, when you talk about uh, we were talking about microsoft, remember um?

1:15:34 - Leo Laporte
oh yeah, I don't I. I change the subject as quickly as I can I.

1:15:38 - Jason Snell
I mean, we get in, we get in down these paths and it's fine. I I just wanted to say I find it almost anachronistic now to have a conversation of uh-oh, what does this mean in the Mac PC wars.

Because I think the truth is, first off, how do you want to cast it? The truth is that Apple's Mac sales have outpaced and there was just a report today have outpaced the PC market pretty much, you know, if not every quarter, most of the time for the last decade, and the PC market has been in recession for a lot of that time, although recently it has turned around. It was up. According to the Canalys analysis of this last quarter, it was up 3%, Apple was up 7%, something like that, but by percentage right, so Apple's got a lot of room to grow.

Apple has been growing Mac sales, including in periods where overall PPC sales were down, mac sales have continued to rise. That's great. You could also say, okay, apple's really taken over. What's their market share globally? And the answer is 9%. So you could also say, yes, it's healthy, but it's not huge. And I think that those are two things that are probably pretty stable and that for them to change it would require a dramatic shift. Apple would have to be so far ahead or so far behind and they made some hay with Apple Silicon.

But when I look at this, I think exactly what Andy said, which is it is Coke or Pepsi. I think the truth is there are people who prefer Windows, there are people who prefer Mac and there are people who don't care. And among the people who don't care, most of them will just go with a PC because they use it at work and it's easy and it's cheap and whatever they have reasons. I think Apple has always excelled at reaching people who actually care. Apple's growth comes from people who maybe don't care, but they have an iPhone, they have affinity for Apple as a brand, they could see how it would fit better into their lives and they grow their market a little bit.

But, like for me, the most important thing, the most interesting thing about these Microsoft products that are so close to the MacBook Air, is what does that mean for the world of Windows PCs? Because you look at the operating system vendor making this really excellent product and I wonder whether that will change the world of Windows and drive it to be more like Apple. Or will it be that it turns out? You know, the people who buy Windows PCs just don't care about the stuff that Apple people do. And having a MacBook Air for Windows is nice for the people who care, but most of them don't. I don't. That I'll leave to Paul Theriot and everybody else who was a Windows expert. But, like I'm happy for my Windows friends that they have a good laptop, good for you, it isn't a religious war anymore.

But yeah, it feels it's not we a religious war anymore. But yeah, it feels it's not. We all lived through the wars and it's like that's not going anywhere. Windows isn't going anywhere and that's fine.

1:18:33 - Leo Laporte
Just to reiterate those numbers hold on a second, just to reiterate those numbers from canalis the pc market grew five percent in 2023.

1:18:41 - Alex Lindsay
The mac market grew 22 percent but remember that's 22 percent of a much smaller yeah, but remember when the mac was like five percent.

1:18:48 - Jason Snell
In the us the numbers are different.

1:18:50 - Leo Laporte
Apple is now 14.2 percent of the us pc market. That is a stunning number for those of us who lived in that era when apple was a real minority and those.

1:19:02 - Jason Snell
Those numbers are 3.4 worldwide for pc growth and six percent for apple, because apple is not as strong. Us is a very strong apple market, but be that as it may, yeah, it is as a. Again, it's which side of the coin here. As a long time, like I always said, I started writing about apple when they were going out of business, um, the. The fact that they've got the that kind of us market share is amazing like it is they sell and it's, and the truth is they, they sell, I mean the country.

The country has grown but, like Apple sells more Macs today than they have ever, and that's true over the last like two or three years is the high watermark of the Mac up to now. So the Mac's doing fine, right, but you can look at the other side and say 15%, that's it.

1:19:51 - Leo Laporte
It's like okay, fair, all right, that's fine.

1:19:52 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, as somebody who believes in Linux on the desktop. 15% sounds pretty damn good, but what makes it even more impressive is when you think about this is one company that is manufacturing 15% of the computers in the entire world?

1:20:04 - Leo Laporte
How many PC companies are there?

1:20:06 - Andy Ihnatko
Thousands right, yeah, exactly. And I'm really, really intrigued by the difference between this A, I'm not happy that there is a duopoly in both desktops and mobile. Okay, we should not simply accept that. Oh well, of course there's only going to be two. Well, no, there should be eight, nine, 10, really Okay. Fragmentation is bad for an entire industry but it's good for the one person, for the individual who gets the device that they want running the operating system that they want. But that's just my sermonizing. But the idea of you have Apple that is being a boutique sort of artisan sort of manufacturer, and we can't ignore the fact that most they are not capable of fulfilling all of the PC desktop needs of the entire world. Because there are, there's a reason why, if you go onto government auction sites or local auction sites, you can buy, like Dell Optiplex towers, shrink, wrapped, a hundred of them for like $80. Like, not as bad as that. But because this is what people, an office needs 100 identical computers for workstations.

1:21:15 - Leo Laporte
Our editors all use Dell workstations for editing with Adobe Premiere. That is how we edit. We don't use Final Cut Pro on Macs. We use them.

1:21:25 - Andy Ihnatko
And between the two of them you have a vibrant PC market where we will actually make a specific kind of computer that is only for this one use, because there is a $5 million market for this specific kind of PC and we're a small company that can do that All the way up to. We are building fancy machines that could make a MacBook Air user kind of envy, because the fit, finish and function is just as good but you still have artisanal the cloud changes things too.

1:21:54 - Leo Laporte
You know, as we move to remote work, in the next few months we're going to operate off a Macintosh in the cloud at Mac Stadium, by the way which has two gigabits up and down bandwidth, so it'll be probably an easier, faster solution than a local mac for for the editors and uh, and they're going to be able to use uh, azure and windows in the cloud if they need to. We have that now to do editing. Once you get to that point, it doesn't really matter what your hardware is at all. I mean, that's this is an ancient religious war that maybe doesn't matter.

1:22:31 - Alex Lindsay
Well, I mean there's a lot of. I mean, when it comes, it depends on what you're doing. So Excel is running as fast as it's ever going to run, Like you know. So if you're doing business on both platforms, by the way, probably right, yeah, it's, it is, it's, it's, it's going to it, of the video subsystems, audio subsystems and so on and so forth, the Mac OS does start to make a difference and you can do a lot of those things on the PC as well, so people can choose which one they want to go to.

But the performance numbers that we see, and that's why I think we're seeing Apple start to lean back towards the creatives in a way that I think Apple, their lifeblood, was creatives in the late nineties, early aughts, and then they just forgot about us. They were like we got, we got this thing called an iPod, and then we have an iPhone and and they just didn't really pay much attention to creatives that much. And now they're starting to go hey, how's it going? And you saw that the last iPad was so much about that, because we're the ones that buy the higher end hardware, we're the ones that upgrade much faster, because we need that performance, and I think that. That you know. I think that makes a difference in the problem right now.

The interesting thing now is the Apple up to a certain point, is a great solution for graphics until you get until you. You get to, you know, a $10,000 to $12,000 machine. As soon as you start needing bigger machines than that, then you go back to PCs. So so the. So it's an interesting thing where they, they figured out where and that's about 90, 95% of the graphics market. But I think that that is probably also why you see more of a lean towards greater growth on the in the Mac market is creative professionals, and not when I say creative professionals, creators is a pretty big market, you know, like creators themselves are a pretty big market, for you know, developing for YouTube or TikTok or whatever, and I mean, I only have anecdotal knowledge, I don't have any statistics, but every creator, not every creator, but 95% of the creators that I work with are on a Mac, you know, and on their iPhone, you know, and you see, you see Samsung's, but usually Samsung paid for that.

1:24:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, my son. My son, who's a very active creator, uh uses final cut on a Mac, but he's just faster. What's interesting is and I think there's a whole generation, his generation and after that doesn't really. It's not really. They're not into computers in the way that we used to be, and so he doesn't really care.

1:24:57 - Alex Lindsay
He has no loyalty or attachment to a platform, it's just a tool for him, right, and I think that you know I talked to a lot of folks who do editing and one of the things that I was talking to a creator about it and I said so why do you use Final Cut? Just out of curiosity. And they were like well, I don't get paid per hour, like I just need to get things done. I don't need to do fine color correction, I'm not doing surround sound and I don't get paid per hour. And he said and Final Cut gets about is that I can package it up and get it out. And he said everything else takes more time, or you know, there's a lot of niggly bits to it. And he goes this one just allows me to plow through the system.

1:25:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, let's see what else is going on. We just went down a large rat hole. I'm glad, though, that we can declare the war over.

1:25:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, peace in our time you really, you really feel, you really seem like, uh, like you're old, you feel like you're, you're a dinosaur. If you are still arguing about, you know, the the rightness of apple versus the rightness of I guess I can get that apple that's shaved into the back of my head.

1:26:04 - Leo Laporte
I can let that hair grow in now.

1:26:06 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, okay just the tattoo will never go away no, the tattoo is pretty permanent.

1:26:12 - Leo Laporte
Fortunately it's a twit bug, not an apple book. I'm loyal to my own damn company. Uh, do you want to do rumors? Do you want to do leaks? Do we care? Is it meaningful at this point in time?

1:26:26 - Jason Snell
I don't know yeah, existential question isn't question, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Is it ever meaningful?

1:26:32 - Andy Ihnatko
I thought the rumor about a plastic-bodied Apple Watch was interesting because I'm like why would Apple want to do that? Because it's not as though they're really trying to compete. They already have a nice, inexpensive Apple Watch that can compete with the two or $300 like premium fitness watches and the premium like Samsung watches that are out there. Why would they? What price point would they be trying to hit? If they were trying to hit 99 bucks, that would be amazing. And you can do, and you can do a very, very well-built, uh, durable, uh watch out of plastic.

Just take a look at a hundred dollar Casio G-Shock, it'll be. It'll be. If you're buried with one, they can dig you up in 500 years. And if it's a solar model, leave it out in the sun, it will continue to work. And it's a plastic bodied device. But I just don't know if Apple wants to have a $99. I could definitely see them doing what if we were to take something that's not an Apple Watch, it is simply a fitness device. But we want to make it as accessible as possible and we definitely want to make it so that you can buy this and maybe a pair of AirPods for $200. So a $99, like cheap AirPods $99 Apple Watch I could see that you know what's made out of plastic the AirTag.

1:27:52 - Leo Laporte
Here's an election season AirTag story from the Wall Street Journal. So it's apparently a big problem that people steal campaign signs yard signs off your yard. It is in our little town of Petaluma. We've had city council members complain that other city council members were telling people to go around and pull up their yard signs. So, according to the Wall Street Journal, campaigns are now putting air tags that seems like an expensive solution in their campaign yard signs, but that is so satisfying when you catch them.

1:28:26 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like I would pay $30 to see the blood drain from that person's face when I see like oh nice pile of Andy Anotko for city treasurer signs like in the backyard.

1:28:38 - Leo Laporte
John Dittmore is running for a seat on the Brevard County Commission in Florida. He says he believes he is being targeted decided to put up a replacement sign with a tracking device at the same intersection. Others had disappeared. He spent three hours one night staking out the intersection in hope of spotting the would-be thieves. He went to bed but his wife woke him up when their iphone showed the sign on the move. He, uh, he found him and a pile of them. He called the police after tracking the air tag to a pickup truck parked in the driveway of a home eight miles away. They questioned two teens. Oh man, it wasn't his, it wasn't his opposition. When they learned about the tracking device Quote, the kid's eyes bugged out, said Dittmore. Teens were charged with criminal mischief and grand theft for taking nine signs. By the way, the signs are not cheap cheap. The value of the signs was more than 100 bucks a sign 1100, and later on in the and later on in the story.

1:29:37 - Andy Ihnatko
It goes up to other examples of like where a candidate's signs were being like stolen by another city councilman yeah, see, that's what was happening in petaluma, and and and.

1:29:48 - Leo Laporte
There was always this accusation back and forth, but nobody ever had proof. Well, now you can put an air tag in there.

1:29:55 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, although already it's very, very correct to recommend to people that I don't care if your Find my iPhone says that it's at this specific address, do not go there and try to click your sign. Do not go there and try to collect your sign. What if the person who stole your sign is somebody who thinks that the most violently ultra-right candidate is way too liberal for their case, that they think that guns should be issued to people at age five as opposed to not regulated? They can keep my signs.

1:30:25 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, please don't kill me, it is just a sign after all. All right, a little break here, and then I want to talk about F1, the movie.

1:30:38 - Jason Snell
Whoa.

1:30:40 - Leo Laporte
You know, lisa and I did go see the Las Vegas Formula One race last year and we had seats. I thought those would be really great seats. They were on the strip, which is the highest speed part of the racetrack, and we were sitting in the grandstands and all you see is I mean literally less than a second and they're gone.

1:31:04 - Alex Lindsay
And then every once in a while, if they're close, if they're close to each other, it's more than one. They all come one after the other.

1:31:13 - Leo Laporte
What you do though I have to say I've watched it on TV, been a fan for a while there is a rumble, a deep rumble to it, and when I put on the AirPods and put on the sound cancellation, the noise cancellation, you don't feel it, but when you take them out and I did want ear protection because it was loud there's a feeling of power. You don't really realize how fast these cars are going. We also, it turned out, had a good spot, because one of the drivers hit a water main cover and we saw him sparking down the road. But that was it.

1:31:46 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean, I would not do it again. Because, again, because it's. But seriously, isn't it like so much, like I can't watch boxing because I know that these people are suffering debilitating lifelong injuries with every bout, even in training, f1, like now that it's, now it's safe.

It's, still it's still, it's still super dangerous, like when you see the Netflix series of like an amazing crash. Amazing in that you're amazed that somebody survived, let alone they are intact enough just to be angry that they crashed Because there was a fireball there's tumbling end over end over end and then they just simply climbed out. Oh gosh, darn it.

1:32:23 - Leo Laporte
They've done an amazing job. It really made a mistake.

1:32:26 - Andy Ihnatko
It's mind blowing so basically, if there's a crash, you're at least not necessarily thinking that they're going to bring out the tarp to cover the cockpit. It's like, okay, you don't feel as guilty as you might otherwise. I mean you watch documentaries about in the 60s and 70s.

1:32:41 - Leo Laporte
I have a hard time watching the NFL, to be honest. How Senna died, oh yeah. Well, senna's death was why they have the hands device and they have all of the, you know, the collar and all that stuff, because they really are trying to protect these cars.

1:32:55 - Andy Ihnatko
The hands device was for Dale Earnhardt, the halo device was Mike. That was the response to Senna, I'm sorry. The halo on the F1. Like you saw amazing controversy between the builders and the drivers saying, oh, but I'm going to obstruct this, it's going to obstruct that. And then the first time it was in a race and here's the cockpit camera of here is the wheel that would have crushed this person instantly and like, oh, halo is not so bad, we like the Halo.

1:33:21 - Leo Laporte
Yep, all right. Well, we just did our F1 segment. Hey, I know we got a Vision Pro segment coming up. How about that? And you know what? The combination of the two. Ooh, now we're talking something, but first a word from our sponsor. We're very happy to have 1Password as a sponsor. What you didn't know is we've had 1Password as a sponsor for a long time because we had Kolide, K-O-L-L-I-D-E as a sponsor. 1password acquired Kolide, and now the two together like peanut butter and jelly.

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I said no MDM. You don't need any MDM. It ensures that every device is known, every device is healthy, every login is protected. This way, you don't have to try to ban shadow IT or BYOD or you know people are going to do what they do, but you could start protecting them and your network with 1Password's extended access management. This is a really great combination. Check it out at 1password.com/macbreak. Users love it. You will love it. 1, 1P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D.com/macbreak. It's kind of ironic that a break-in at the other password manager would have been solved if they'd only been using this one, 1passwordcom slash Mac break. All right, we apparently John Ashley, our talented producer and technical director, has created for us. Oh, but you don't have it. No, no.

1:36:43 - John Ashley
See, this is where, when you do the thing now, it's going to just show up magically in post-production.

1:36:48 - Leo Laporte
All right.

1:36:49 - Andy Ihnatko
So even though you don't have it and people watching, I won't see it a premiere for everybody, except for the people who are actually doing exactly it's time.

1:36:58 - Alex Lindsay
I'm so lucky for the email.

1:37:01 - Andy Ihnatko
Email us and tell us on discord. Tell us how, how you like it?

1:37:04 - Leo Laporte
yeah, tell us how you liked it. Does it say anything, john ashley? Is it just?

1:37:08 - John Ashley
like it's actually based off of what Andy did last week. Oh, his little jingle.

1:37:12 - Leo Laporte
You made the song. No, what do you see? Yeah, what do you know?

1:37:17 - Andy Ihnatko
I didn't make it. It was Bmorr236. Thank you,Bmorr236. And I used it.

1:37:25 - Jason Snell
Yay.

1:37:37 - Andy Ihnatko
Which is happening right here. So right now I will say ladies, and gentlemen, it's time to talk.

1:37:41 - Leo Laporte
Vision pro Andy. That's your cue go. Oh, you have to do. What do you see? What do you?

1:37:45 - Jason Snell
know it's time to talk bing vision pro. That was for the live audience, that's just the. You know it's time to talk to Vision Pro. Wow, what a great theme song. That was everybody Amazing.

1:37:58 - Andy Ihnatko
If only there were. I'm writing my congressman. That's our new national anthem, if we have any pride in this country at all.

1:38:05 - Leo Laporte
If only there were some Vision Pro news. Alas Tim Cook in an interview says he wears it regularly to watch videos.

1:38:17 - Jason Snell
Yay To an Australian journalist, I believe, who had to fly to Cupertino to interview Tim Cook. I thought that was also a flex right. It's like oh yeah, it's launching in Australia. We've got an availability for you to talk to Tim Cook. Oh amazing, is he coming to sydney? No, but you are coming to gupertino. Fly on over fly that's a long it really puts my my 70 minute drive to apple park in perspective when I meet people who flew in from australia or the uk to go to an apple event yeah here's the deal is the, uh, the quintessential?

1:38:56 - Leo Laporte
vision pro user waiting for more content. That is one of my favorite memes. It's from uh, narcos. That is uh, uh, what's his name? Yeah, bad guy, uh, canada. This friday, ray maxwell's very excited because he bought a vision pro australia yes, and uh, and he bought a vision pro from america that he couldn't use some things with.

1:39:23 - Jason Snell
So I guess, ray, now you'll be able to be legit, you can come out of the closet and tell the world my friends in the UK are excited because, first off, if it breaks, they could take it to a store and instead of flying to New York, and second, it means that they can also buy some other accessories and stuff and like it's and they can use their own Apple ID and it's like there's lots of good things for all of those people out there. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, new markets. There will be an influx of new users to a certain extent and we'll see what happens with with that. The betas are great. I I've been enjoying the vision pro betas because, again, they're actually adding like why are you even on the vision pro if you're not using the beta? You should like. What are you even doing?

1:40:03 - Leo Laporte
if you're going to be cutting it requires you to stay on 1.0.

1:40:06 - Jason Snell
Yeah, be cutting edge, you edge.

1:40:07 - Leo Laporte
See, that's the only reason you use it. Yeah, so what?

1:40:10 - Jason Snell
do you use to?

1:40:10 - Leo Laporte
dust your vision problem.

1:40:12 - Jason Snell
I keep it in a case. I keep it in a case, I'm just teasing.

1:40:16 - Leo Laporte
Cheap case and every day you take it out of that case. I do not use it every day, but I do use it.

1:40:21 - Jason Snell
I would say two or three times a week Nice, and whenever want to leave.

1:40:25 - Leo Laporte
really you still oh yeah. So see, that's good, that's a good sign. So you go like this is good, I like this, I'm enjoying it there's a lot of good stuff in the beta.

1:40:33 - Jason Snell
I can write in it a lot better because the beta's got the pass-through for the keyboard, so you can. You can be on the beach and still see your keyboard, which is nice, because it used to be. You could see your hands but not the keyboard, and so it's like ghostly typing it.

1:40:47 - Alex Lindsay
It's not as good.

1:40:48 - Jason Snell
This is better. And yeah, I did a special persona meeting where we use SharePlay. Do you do that a lot? They're doing some stuff. And Apple intelligence, as we said I think last week. Mark Gurman said it is coming to Vision Pro. It'll be next year, like everything else, but it's not like it's not going to show up there, so it's progressing. They need to do more content. That's the bottom line. They need to do more content, yeah.

1:41:14 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see if Apple like where they go. It's partially needing more content and partially building the tools to develop that content, and so it'll be really interesting to see if Apple does more work on both of those things. I mean, I think that one of the things that a lot of us think is going to happen is when the Blackmagic camera comes out, we think a lot, there'll be a lot of 180 degree spatial that comes out, because-.

1:41:38 - Jason Snell
Oh good.

1:41:39 - Alex Lindsay
Every time you do 180 degree spatial it's like a art project, like it is like nothing, everything is difficult, like everything is hard. And so and this is this is a big piece of like when we're talking about the 90s, like a bunch of stuff came out and then nothing happened and you know a bunch of stuff. You can build all that technology, but if things aren't able to generate the content for that, it will die off by itself. And so I think that you know, um, the black magic, having resolved and obviously final cut, will have some of the tools as well of being able to effectively generate the 180 degree content, because I think a lot of people, when they see the 180 degree content, there's a pretty, you know a high number of people think it's really great.

The problem is is that it's really hard to make right now, and so I think that having a camera that can shoot 90 frames a second, 8k per eye, you know nothing that's never existed before, like to have a single camera that does that well, has never existed in the wild before for what will probably be $25,000. You don't want to say like $25,000 is a lot of money, but that's not what it rents for. It rents for. It'll rent for, you know, $1,000, $1,500 a day, which means people can go out and shoot a concert or shoot something else with it. So I think it's going to be really interesting. I also still think that there's incredible opportunities for things like JigSpace if their business model was more effective. You know, like. Like you know, jigspace is a is a really cool product that is just really expensive to develop for.

1:43:03 - Leo Laporte
And that's your Vision Pro segment, vision Pro segment. Now, you see, now you know we're done talking the Vision Pro.

1:43:14 - Alex Lindsay
I'm going to use the Vision Pro, every Vision Pro segment, to remind people they should go and they should sign up for the StreamVoodoo special oh yeah, when is that? Streamvoodoocom. Well, we're working on getting it updated so that we can come up to Twit and stream it. So we want to stream Twit on a Sunday, so we're a week or two away, oh, exciting. So we're working on that, right now, don't wait too long.

1:43:35 - Leo Laporte
By the way, it's not my product. We're shutting down the studio, I know.

1:43:39 - Alex Lindsay
You don't want to have to do that in the attic.

1:43:41 - Leo Laporte
It just won't be the same.

1:43:49 - Alex Lindsay
I've been using that as well. Hey, we don't have all day, so, yeah, so we're good. So it's not and, by the way, it's not me, it's not like I own the company, it's not, or even part of it. I just I'm just working with stream and they're very grateful, doing great, great work on it and, um, we're really excited because I want to do that before before.

1:44:03 - Leo Laporte
You're not using the studio there where will you is it one camera or is it one camera? And where will you put it like?

1:44:09 - Alex Lindsay
right in front of me. I'm gonna try to put it right in the middle. I mean, we're gonna play with it a little bit and try to put it right in the middle, so we'll put it over.

1:44:14 - Leo Laporte
Do you get surround sound as well?

1:44:16 - Alex Lindsay
like uh we can't, we think we can. That's what. That's what I'm working on right now.

1:44:21 - Leo Laporte
So basically, I have do you want me to try to get all live people for that episode. Would that be great that'd be better.

1:44:28 - Alex Lindsay
Let me, let me see. Yeah, that would be great. You know, it will look as soon as you have a date?

1:44:32 - Leo Laporte
let us know and I'll get benito on that and we can, you know, get people who can come up to be here yeah.

1:44:38 - Alex Lindsay
So we're going to try to do and we will try to. I mean, with everyone sitting in front. I don't know how much it's going to make a difference to have like surround audio, but we are going to try it. So basically we'll have uh ambisonic folded down into vinyl Jason. Could you want to come up for that?

1:44:52 - Leo Laporte
uh, okay, I mean depends on we don't know the date yet right, uh, and and alex is in in the area, so that's to get kathy gellis to come up. Ian thompson's in the area. They're quite a few people, so we'll try to do an all live twit for that one. That would be much better. That would be fun.

1:45:10 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. So, anyway, but you just go to streamvoodoocom, slash spatial and make sure you have the app. It won't be hard to figure out what to do because we'll tell you it's going live and so, um, we're working on that. So this is what they specialize in. I just sign up for it. I think you still have to sign up for it. I think they're still rolling it out. Yeah, it says join beta. It's a beta, yeah, but uh, but you should sign up for it and it's cool, I would imagine.

1:45:40 - Leo Laporte
If you have a vision pro you, you're pretty much in like it's not yeah, yeah, no, totally it's.

1:45:48 - Alex Lindsay
It's uh, and and I think that again, um, you know, I think that there's a lot, of, a lot of opportunity. I just want to promote the idea that people start to realize how cool it will be to see 3d. So and we saw a little bit of that, uh, at wwc with darian fireball, and I think that, uh, I think you're gonna do it better we know that.

1:46:06 - Leo Laporte
But now does this mean I have to buy a Vision Pro? I guess I do.

1:46:12 - Alex Lindsay
You don't have to, I'll show it to you Can. I use yours. I have one. I take the lenses out and you'll have to reset it and you'll be able to see it.

1:46:21 - Leo Laporte
See, mine would be just getting dusty. In fact, I got rid of the MetaQuest Pro. I gave it away. Who took it? Do we know, john? No, we don't know the htc5 has been sitting in the giveaway room for a long time as far as I know, nobody was the supernatural.

1:46:39 - Alex Lindsay
I think supernatural is is the best vr exercise tool so far. Like I play with that a fair bit. Burke got it burke got it.

1:46:47 - Leo Laporte
Congratulations, burke, you're a winner for the hcc. Hcc, the vibe, no, he took the other thing. What was the meta? The meta quest, that's you know what. That's not bad, I mean, it was 1400 when I bought it, but it was fun. I just I'm not.

1:47:04 - Alex Lindsay
I don't want to strap a computer on my face, I just it doesn't feel good I think again, I think the quest, especially the, I think there's a lot that I enjoy on the.

1:47:14 - Leo Laporte
Just on the little 200 quest, yeah, that's pretty good yeah, I mean, for people who are interested, who don't want to spend 3500 bucks, the quest 3 is a very good choice. Yeah, yeah, uh, oh, did I do the ad? I can't even remember where I am. What am I doing? Who am I? Yes, I did do the ad we. I can't even remember where I am. What am I doing? Who am I? Yes, I did do the ad.

1:47:33 - Andy Ihnatko
We never actually got around to talking about the Apple's F1 movie.

1:47:35 - Leo Laporte
That's what we're supposed to be talking about. The first teaser has been released.

1:47:41 - Jason Snell
Now this.

1:47:42 - Leo Laporte
I can't play it. I understand this goes back to Tim Cook was at a Formula One race last year waving the checkered flag kind of an anemic fashion. That was the Austin race, I think he was at and I thought, oh, I wonder if Apple's in the bidding for Formula One that's currently owned by ESPN, the United States Sky Sports around most of the world. But no, I think they were preparing to be making a movie with uh brad pitt, uh about formula one, and the first teaser has been released. I can't play it. It's produced by jerry bruckheimer, so you know it's going to be exciting. And lewis hamilton, seven-time f1 champion, uh comes out june 25th. Oh, I'm sorry internationally, june 25th. Oh, I'm sorry Internationally, june 25th. North America, june 27th 2025.

1:48:36 - Andy Ihnatko
They're still filming it 2025. Oh man Well, because they're actually filming during the 2024 race year. So the events, so they're actually filming at these events. It's like back in the 60s and 70s they made Le Mans with Steve McQueen, another movie called Grand Prix with James Gardner and just like the same thing.

It wasn't like we'll create a racetrack in an airport and then have green screen. No, they actually were filming at every one of these events and both of those were amazing movies. So it's incredible that they're doing the entire race season with the full like, of course, just just like the military was happy to cut to collaborate on top gear, uh, f1 is very, very happy to collaborate on this movie. So, like there was the uh, like if you're a fan of like the Netflix, uh, uh, the Netflix series, uh, f1, need for Speed or Drive to Survive, whatever it is. So you see, like there's like they catch like Gunther Steiner, who was like fired from the Haas team like last season or whatever Like. So you see him like at one of the race kiosks, like oh, I know that guy because I watch Netflix.

1:49:41 - Leo Laporte
But the problem is Gunther no longer is in charge of the Haas team.

1:49:54 - Andy Ihnatko
So I don't maybe that dates it.

1:49:55 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. That's the problem. You know that there's gonna be all new drivers, all new, everything next year, yeah, anyway this is the reason we're talking about.

1:49:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Is it's an apple tv production? Yeah, apple tv. Yeah, brad pitt, brad pitt. And uh, another actor who there's?

1:50:01 - Leo Laporte
gunter, I just saw gunter leaning out. Tell you, is you can show that I'm not gonna let the movie go? I just show you a picture of gunter leaning out saying well, he's pretty profane so I can't say what he was saying.

1:50:14 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah isn't this, it's just there's just going to be a lot of really interesting technical stuff about this, because they're actually brad pitt and damson idris were like the two like main, like race drivers, actors, like they're actually. It says here that they're actually driving f1 cars, which is an incredible thing for anybody to learn how to do, because can you imagine, steve mcqueen were basically driving pretty ordinary cars very dangerously, but pretty ordinary cars and of the having like to put cameras and these things in such a way that these people don't kill themselves, even if they're driving the f1 car at actor-type levels of fear. These things are so bad. I'm not a huge F1 person, but I do know that these cars are immensely balanced and the idea of, okay, we want to put an 11-ounce camera here, like okay, well, they're not going to be able to take any curves if we put 11 ounces right there.

1:51:09 - Leo Laporte
So Formula One does put cameras all over the cars, and apparently there was a slot for a camera that they've stopped using. That was still in an alpine, and so the video that you're seeing, in fact here's a little piece of it now I'm not going to show the whole thing, but this is the brad pitt race car in the front, but the actual footage is is pierre gasly driving last year with footage they recorded on a racetrack, so you know what this will be a great example of movie magic. Looks really good. I can't wait to see it.

1:51:38 - Andy Ihnatko
An hour of it is filmed at IMAX, so that's going to be worth $20 to me.

1:51:42 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, from the cars, not from the cars.

1:51:46 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know, I don't think you couldn't fit an IMAX camera in the cars.

It from. I don't think. Well, you couldn't fit an imax camera in the cars. Oh, big, there's a, there's a. Well, the thing is there there's a article in deadline with the producers and the directors and like they really, really want to make this a really good imax movie. So I'm not, I'm not sure they've. They're saying there's an hour of imax in this thing. Every single dialogue scene between that act, two actors like in at their living room, is imax. I there's. You could answer this better than anybody else. Would it be possible to upscale with AI or something else to IMAX you would consider.

1:52:18 - Alex Lindsay
I mean so, if you're talking about an IMAX, imax camera, that's a film camera. It's really big and that's what they use. That's what Christopher Nolan uses. There are digital cameras that are considered IMAX level cameras. So the Aerie, some of the Aries and the Sony Venice and a couple other cameras are, are considered IMAX. You know, uh, qualified cameras, and so they probably, and those, those can be fairly small, so like you could put an Aerie, lf or something like that up there and and um, and so that they could potentially put one of these smaller cameras on one of those, uh, without too much trouble, but they wouldn't put it.

The imax camera, like the film camera, is massive and you know we, you know we think that someday it'll be digital. The sphere camera has roughly the same resolution as the imax film. Well, depending on who you talk for the last way, I guess yeah, but the problem is that still takes like a crew to run, like to turn on. It's not. It's maybe quieter, uh, than the imax camera. The imax camera is all you're gonna loop all of those, all that dialogue every time you use an imax camera. So, but, but the um, yeah, it's going, you know so uh, but uh, but anyway it's, it's it and you can up res, up resolution, noise reduction. All these other things have become pretty amazing. So it's. You know you can do a lot with the footage that we get summer 2025 summer next year, and then I hear summer in.

1:53:32 - Leo Laporte
So it's, you know you can do a lot with the footage that we get Summer 2025, summer next year, and then I hear summer in 2026,. It's going to be the Ted Lasso collab, where Ted Lasso gets to coach a F1 team. It should be a lot of fun.

1:53:46 - Andy Ihnatko
Actually there is a Ted Lasso connection. The actress who played the psychiatrist on Ted Lasso is playing the non-Brad Pitt race driver's mom Wow.

1:53:57 - Leo Laporte
Is Apple getting a repertory company of actors that appear in Apple TV shows? That would be kind of interesting.

1:54:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Maybe she's like the John Ratzenberger of Apple TV productions, where there's the good luck charm she has to have at least one line in every single production.

1:54:11 - Leo Laporte
Every Apple TV show. Good for her, good for her. One last story before we get to our picks of the week, because I want to do that next. Uh and I I'll. This one is a rumor, but I like it because I hope. Hopeful. There is apparently in tv os, in the beta, a touchscreen ready interface which at least nine to five mac says. That's probably because the home pod with display is going to be running tv os.

1:54:42 - Jason Snell
Yes, credible yeah yeah plaster stories all along that apple's been working on a HomePod with screen like an Amazon Echo Show or a Google Home, and that they were going to. I mean HomePod already, I think is basically using a modded version of tvOS, but this would be an interface that you could control with your voice or with touch, just like those other devices, and so they use tvOS but they've got to put kind of a touch layer on it because there's no touch tvOS. But this sounds like it's getting closer to reality, which I'm excited, because I've had one of those screen assistant thingies in my kitchen for quite a while. I've cycled through the Amazon and the Google products and they're not the best.

1:55:24 - Leo Laporte
You know what I want it for, Since I'm in the Apple ecosystem. It would be nice. Homekit we need a touchscreen for HomeKit. Homekit, we need a touchscreen for HomeKit. That'd be nice. It would be. You know, you could have your HomeKit scenarios, scenes, and touch them and choose. That seems like a really natural. And since the HomePod and the Apple TV are both, you know, HomeKit base stations, that seems like a likely.

1:55:47 - Alex Lindsay
I think even just people talking to each other while they're in the kitchen. I mean, you know, I have family members that talk to each other hours a day and I think them being able to do that. The problem really is that if you put it in an iPad, there's other things you want to do with the iPad, and I did get some Amazon shows for parents and everything else, and it was just quirky enough for them not to use it for radio. But that's about it. Like that's all they. That's all they ever got got to really doing.

Um, and I think that so many people have iPhones that if you did just do something where people can call in and you have something that's kind of like an appliance in your in your kitchen, that is that, that you can sit there and answer questions, and I think that I think, uh, facebook went a long way to figuring that out with the portal. It was just the problem was that people had trust issues about having a portal in there. Right, it was a trust issue and that's what Apple doesn't have to deal with, and Apple TV also already has space time right.

1:56:40 - Leo Laporte
Maybe Burke's going to do some sort of weird mishmash with the MetaQuest and the portal. I got two of the big ones. I thought I was going to give it to my mom and then I realized oh wait a minute, you have to have a Facebook account. It's not going to fly.

1:56:55 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, but so I think that having that and being able to call someone, that you put one of those in their kitchen you're a family member or a parent or whatever and being able to just call with your phone and talk to them for a while and have it just be there and have it, talk to them for a while and have it just be there and have it, and a lot of the technology that Apple's building for the laptops and the iPads, all the following functions that they've built into it. Yep Center stage.

1:57:20 - Leo Laporte
Finally, the AT&T video phone is a reality. Yeah Well, it's cute.

1:57:26 - Alex Lindsay
It's cute on those things, but it's really good on this.

1:57:27 - Jason Snell
You could do this now on Apple TV. Yeah, it's continuity camera and center stage and it works pretty well. But you got to set up your phone and put it on your TV or whatever. Like. This is just all built in this is what grandma wants right here.

1:57:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, $300.

1:57:45 - Alex Lindsay
If it was $200, $300, $200 or $300 and you throw it in someone's kitchen and it's it's a, let's say, a 10 inch or a 13 inch screen with a, you know, with a following camera that's 1080p. You know, I think there'd be a lot of people that would want to play.

1:58:07 - Andy Ihnatko
And there there are a lot. There are a lot of ways to do this and, by the way, this is live and out there, but you just can't actually use it. So that's a good sign of something. The rumors that have been spilling around about this is that it might be something to do with. Mark Gurman loves the idea that Apple is trying to build a robot sign of home device and that's going to be the next home device, but that kind of fits in with a rumor that, no, not necessarily a robot, but something that's more like a g4 imac, where the screen is like pivotable on on an arm so you can actually put it exactly where you want to eye level, aiming at whatever you want to do.

Um, I, I think it's interesting.

I mean, I I have a couple of smart displays uh, google, google stuff.

I don't necessarily start videos or start calls on it, but I definitely continue videos and continuous calls on it, like when it's time for dinner, I might move from the TV into the kitchen and basically just move this video onto a smart display. What I would really love to see is Google decided to try to do another tablet last year and the only good idea from the entire thing was the idea that it ships with its own little smart speaker, magnetic based and charging base. But it's not just like oh well, if you dock this to this thing, it will have a speaker and it'll charge. It actually changes its entire interface from an Android based tablet to more of a smart display sort of thing. I would love to see that sort of thing in a MagSafe accessory for, particularly like for an iPad mini, or I would. I would be more interested in buying like $500 worth of iPad and this smart dock than I would in a $300 device. That is 100% a HomePod smart speaker, but we'll see how things actually work out, yeah.

1:59:59 - Leo Laporte
I have the Echo Show 10, which really looks exactly like a HomePod with an iPad attached to it, and I really like it. It follows you around as you're talking to it. It it has it print senses your presence, so it's always aimed at you, uh, and it's great for calls too. I got it. I got one for my mom and one for me so that we could talk to each other, and it is a very natural.

2:00:21 - Alex Lindsay
I really thought that that was really aggressive. The, the pan tilt, zoom kind of approach to it, or at least the pan uh approach to that is, you know it. Just really that's a scary thing to do on a consumer product you know to, to give it something you know, just a lot of the. Now you have moving parts, like what Facebook did was have a I'm going to do a 4k signal and I'm just going to move, I'm going to pan inside of that signal to make that actually work.

2:00:44 - Leo Laporte
That looks less creepy than the things actually turning.

2:00:46 - Jason Snell
Mark Gurman keeps referring to this thing as a robot, because I think that that is Apple's idea. Is that they want? They want it to little like a little.

I wonder if it might be a little like that, like that G4 iMac where there's kind of like the HomePod base and then the sort of screen above it that can kind of like turn around, could be adorable, honestly. And the other thing that I found with those other devices that I'm actually looking forward to here is Apple TV. Tv OS as a legacy means probably it will support all the streaming services.

so if you actually want to watch something in the kitchen, let's say it will actually or listen, it will actually work, because those apps are already on tv os and that's always been my frustration with the google hub max, because of youtube.

2:01:29 - Leo Laporte
They don't have enough apps no, because of youtube tv, uh. So I can say, please play cnn in the kitchen and watch it on that little screen. It works great.

2:01:39 - Jason Snell
I can watch all the tv shows if you're using the platform owners app you have to use yeah, you have to use youtube tv but like there's always on all of those amazon too, they support some services, but not no, it'd be great if it supported all the apple tv services, all those there's a netflix app and a hulu app and it's just like they're all there and apple has proven that it can do exactly what everybody else is doing.

2:02:01 - Alex Lindsay
Just kind of quietly set, set down and there's a whole bunch of apple users that will just go oh, it's all integrated and multiple name timers.

2:02:08 - Andy Ihnatko
Continuity would be amazing on this kind of device. And the other thing that is just simple like industrial design, that, given that this is not just like a tech gadget that's on a desk with a stack of hard drives and stuff, this is something that is supposed to be in your kitchen or inside your living room, not convincing everybody that you are a nerd who probably owns Google Glass and still wears it as a device that integrates with whatever your decor is. That looks like a beautiful object, even when it's static. Apple could do something that could get a lot of people interested in this kind of product that would not be interested in such a thing made by anybody else. Yeah.

2:02:46 - Leo Laporte
Folks, we have come to the point in the show where I beg you to give us money and then we give you reasons to spend your money. We call it the Picks of the Week and the Club Twit Mention. Your picks are coming up. Prepare, if you will. Meanwhile, I have a pick for you, all you wonderful people, especially you people who are watching now on YouTube and on twitchtv and on kick and on X. First of all, we're thrilled to have you, we love you and we would love to have you in our community. Now it starts at $7 a month. You can make it as much as you want, but $7 a month gives you a lot of benefits ad, free versions of all the shows, video for all the shows, access to the club, twitter, discord, where we not only stream the shows live, but great conversations go on day and night, plus all the bonus content like Stacy's Book Club, home Theater, geeks, lots and lots of stuff. $7 a month is as low as we could go. We made it as affordable as possible because we give you a lot of content for a very little amount of money, but it makes a big difference to us, because without it, I think we're really going to have to do some belt tightening.

Many podcasts have gone under podcast networks too. We want to keep doing this. Uh, we're doing everything we can to tighten the belt. We're going to shut down the studio and start sending everybody home work from home, but your help would be much appreciated. If you'd like to know more twittv slash club twit, rod salter, in our youtube chat, says I'm signing up for Club Twit. I love the podcast. Thank you, rod. I appreciate it. We'd love to have all of you Twittv slash Club Twit. Now let's get our picks of the week. Now that I've given you a way to spend money, Alex Lindsay is going to give you a way to spend money with his pick. So much money.

2:04:47 - Jason Snell
Oh boy.

2:04:48 - Leo Laporte
We like to start with Alex, because he likes the expensive.

2:04:54 - Alex Lindsay
You've been very good lately. I'm breaking left, so anyway. So the, so I want this.

2:05:00 - Leo Laporte
I don't even know what it does, but I like how it looks.

2:05:03 - Alex Lindsay
I have this. I've had this thing on my desk and I I had to search back through MBW picks to make sure I hadn't picked it before. Thank you for that website, by the way. It's so valuable, so, anyway, so this is a eight by eight matrix and this is made by Monoprice. It's not a particularly you know. It's nothing special in the sense that it's not super shiny. It's a one U. It does have rack ears that you can throw into a rack if you want. It doesn't?

Mine sits on my desk and what I do is I have a lot of monitors. I have about I don't know eight or nine monitors that are here, so I have more monitors than I actually have room in this matrix, but it's enough, and so I can put all my monitors in and then I have eight ins. So for all my computers that are sitting on my desk, I have inputs and I have my Apple TV go into it and I have other things that are, you know, and then I have eight outs so I can go out from there to my switcher.

2:05:55 - Leo Laporte
So it's basically an.

2:05:56 - Alex Lindsay
HDMI splitter is what you said. It's on steroids A matrix, but it's a matrix because it can send anything to anything.

I can send, but I can the one of those inputs to all the eight of the outputs, or to two of them, or to six of them, or to whatever I want. So it's it's like, it's more like a video router. I mean really is a video router except for HDMI, and it has a web interface so you can go in there and do it all on your own. You can do EDIDs so you can say, watch this monitor as an EDID and and copy it, um and so that it'll, so that the handshake works. You have a web interface. You also have RS-232, which I keep on saying I'm going to work on, but I haven't yet. But you could set it up so that you do RS-232 commands. You can. I believe it has rest, which I haven't taken advantage of yet.

But the big thing that I do with it often is I set up where I want my monitors, because I have gray matter, which is one show that I do where I don't sit in this chair.

Michael Krasny actually sits in my chair and I sit over in another desk, but I need my monitors to be all set differently for that. And then I do presentations and in that presentation mode I have to have all my monitors look a different way so that they're where I need them to be, and I can save these as presets and all I do is hit a button like oh, this is preset three, this is preset one. Like I'm in preset one right now, if I do my presentation, I go into preset four, my preset three, and I just hit these buttons and all my monitors just change to where they need to be for that, for that setup, and and I it's super convenient, and it's super convenient and I can't believe I haven't recommended this before and I've had it now. I've been using it now for two or three years and I use it every day and I change it every day and it's well-worn and it's worked well.

2:07:43 - Leo Laporte
It goes up to 4K. The sweetest things we have in this studio is a Blackmagic Matrix that has a router, video router, video router. What does it have it has? It's not black magic. I thought we had a black magic one. It was great black magic one. Oh, we have a new one I don't even know about. See they hide. This is an hdmi or sdi, not the kvm. I'm talking about the Video Hub, which is Blackmagic right. It has 72 in and 144 out. It's SDI. Okay, I understand. It's amazing because, especially when we had a giant studio pre this one, when we were in the brick house, you could route any input to any output. That's what this does.

2:08:33 - Alex Lindsay
But only just for H2, eight to eight, only eight, but it's HDMI. There's no big. I mean there are. There are big routers that do more HDMI.

2:08:41 - Jason Snell
Well, it's a lot less really expensive.

2:08:42 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, like this is. Yeah, I mean, like I'm, you know, like we have four or five of the 40 by 40s. Uh, four or five of the 40 by 40s we want to get move into the one. Uh, black magic now has 120 by 120 in 4k, which is a big thing for us, but, um, but that's in for an sdi workflow. This is all hdmi.

2:09:00 - Leo Laporte
We're all, we're all uh sdi here but the news studio well, most all my work is an sdi we're going to, I believe, is the Super VHS. Join the club. That's one of your bonus features. We lived large, didn't we? Now, alex, you're living large. You're getting larger and larger with this office hours. Honestly, I really think we want to, as we reinvent what we do, we want to kind of emulate what you do. I like the idea of a clubhouse where people gather and we can talk about stuff.

2:09:39 - Alex Lindsay
That's what we do. That's all we do. We sit around talking about stuff. There's a whole bunch of us and the format is we are going to open up the doors and say, what are you guys interested in? And people ask questions and then we just answer them. Right, if we had to come up with something every day, that would be. No, it's brilliant.

2:09:55 - Leo Laporte
Office hours are global. Yeah, the only thing is you haven't figured out a way to monetize it yet.

2:10:02 - Alex Lindsay
I'm working on it, you know I, you know like I I think that it is. I get a lot out of it in the sense that I keep track of a lot of things I stick yeah, you know, I meet a lot of people, um I've, I've um been hired by people, uh, in the so it's good for your business. I hire I hire people from the system. People have built whole companies inside of office hours and so it has other benefits to it than than, uh, direct monetization.

2:10:26 - Leo Laporte
So I think that's the. What we want to do with club twit is make that be. That's how we would monetize it. It's a club, it's a clubhouse and you pay seven bucks a month and you're part of that. You're going to help me set that all up. I think I'm happy to.

2:10:41 - Alex Lindsay
Any way I can help. So just let me know You're the best. Yeah, absolutely.

2:10:48 - Leo Laporte
Officehoursglo website. And if you want to hire this guy, zero, nine, zero dot media uh, that's the place to go, uh, he's. There's no one better. The best in the biz.

2:10:59 - Andy Ihnatko
Andy and otko, your pick of the week really really familiar apps at a really really good discount. There's a okay. So, uh, we're all used to photoshop, illustrator and, in design, kind of industry standard photo editor or bitmap editor, industry standard vector line art editor and industry standard page layout for printed stuff sort of thing, and those are subscription stuff. So basically it costs money forever every single month. And in the face of that, affinity has created ops that everybody's kind of familiar with by now Affinity, photo Designer and Publisher, which do those same three things, but they are simple, they're $90 each and you own them for life and they are available for Mac, windows, ipad. They all run the same file format, so you can basically cloud sync between all three. They're great, they're wonderful.

And they did something super wonderful this week. They announced that, because they're trying to get people to switch from Adobe, they realized that, like a two-week trial or a one-month free trial is not going to cut it. They've extended it to a six-month free trial. No restrictions, it's not crippled, you can save, you can sync the full versions of all of these apps. Restrictions it's not crippled, you can save. You can sync the full versions of all of these apps. You can download them for free. All you got to do is sign up for, basically create an account on the on the affinity website. That's all and after. And it's not like you deposit or, by the way, give us a credit card because after six months we're going to charge you for every single app you download. No, it just simply will stop working. And the good news is after that no, it just simply will stop working. And the good news is after that, they will give you 50% off anything. So if you, or if you, or if you want to keep all of them, they'll still. You can get Mac for the Mac version, the Windows version, the iOS for the iPad version of all of those apps for like 82, 83 bucks. It's amazing just for the ability to have these apps waiting for you on your iPad, especially where you don't necessarily have, like, a really good vector app or don't necessarily have a good like photo editor app. Just have those things on your device and you will use it at some point, and then maybe you'll get hooked and maybe you'll realize that $9 and 29 cents to keep this version of this Photoshop grade app on your iPad is very much worth it.

And I have to say, just winding up like these. These are not like brand new, like third upstart. New developer has decided to create something as an alternative to Photoshop and they're like feature. They don't have the features. They can't do the same stuff you can do in Photoshop. Obviously they're not feature compatible between the two. There are a lot of things you get with the Adobe subscription that Affinity Photo, for instance, doesn't do. But 80 to 90 percent of anything you would ever try to do in Photoshop is covered here Layers, text manipulation, like go through the list of stuff and it's got it. It is a professional grade app and, once again, you use it for free for six months and if you decide to keep it, it's not a whole lot of money and it's not a subscription. So you can afford to have a really good photo editor that even if you don't think you're going to be using it a lot every single month, really really great stuff.

2:14:04 - Alex Lindsay
I've been, I've been using it for years and I was, I was excited.

2:14:18 - Leo Laporte
I was going to do that this morning and I got out there and Andy.

2:14:19 - Alex Lindsay
Andy beat me too and I was like it's too bad, I already paid for it. So but, uh, if you haven't, yeah, uh, this is even if you're in version one and you haven't paid for version two. One two adds a lot of stability and because so definitely worth.

2:14:24 - Jason Snell
If you're in version one, definitely, uh, download the demo for them and even people who was like using, is holding on to your last non-subscription version of Illustrator, which is where I was. I bought Designer and it's fantastic and does everything that I ever.

I was reduced to using Illustrator in a VM because it didn't work anymore on my Mac current OS, but I still did it and I got to the point where I'm like, what am I doing here about designer? And it's just like, oh my God, look, it's an app running normally and it does everything I need and it's reasonable and, yeah, it's great.

2:15:02 - Leo Laporte
So designer is page layout right? It's like-.

2:15:05 - Andy Ihnatko
Designer is page layout.

2:15:06 - Leo Laporte
yeah, it's like For printed publications. In design it's like InDesign right and then Affinity Photo.

2:15:12 - Alex Lindsay
No Designer is Illustrator.

2:15:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Illustrator. Oh, I'm sorry, oh, it's Vector.

2:15:15 - Leo Laporte
Designer is vector-based graphics.

2:15:17 - Andy Ihnatko
Designer is Illustrator Photo is Photoshop.

2:15:19 - Leo Laporte
Publisher is InDesign. Publisher is InDesign. Yeah, okay.

2:15:22 - Jason Snell
Yeah. So if you're an Illustrator, replacement Designer is the way to go, and that was where I, when I do t-shirts as merch and stuff like that, all that stuff I do, my podcast art ends up getting laid out in designer. It's just, it's just really good and I love photoshop and I pay for photoshop, but, um, I don't pay.

2:15:39 - Alex Lindsay
You know again, with the way adobe pricing works, if you want to use any of those other apps, you're basically tithing to adobe a lot of money and it's just, it's not worth it and I still use photoshop, but but I do as much as I can in Affinity Photo and Designer and I still have Illustrator and part of it is I keep on wanting to make sure that I, if it gets any more expensive or I get you know, I don't really feel like I'm going back to it that often that I still know how to use something else. I'm not going through a learning curve. You know there's still some stuff that I, you know I think Photoshop still has some generative AI stuff that I use every day, but but I think that, um, affinity photo is just, I use it probably 90% of the time and it's just, it's just really great.

2:16:17 - Leo Laporte
Is there anything that can take the place of Lightroom? Why don't they do a? Yeah?

2:16:22 - Andy Ihnatko
a Lightroom. That's what I was going to say. I mean Lightroom, the fact that it is multi-platform, so I can start and edit. I can just be hanging out waiting for a bus or something and just with my Android phone, download a raw file that I shot like two months ago, have some fun playing with it and then, when I get back home, pick up my MacBook and start editing it, continue it in Lightroom and maybe throw it off to Photoshop. I don't think there's anything like Lightroom. I don't subscribe to the full boat Adobe package, of course, but they have a photo package that's very, very affordable as far as I'm concerned.

2:16:58 - Jason Snell
It's like 120 bucks and you get Photoshop and Lightroom and that's what I pay for. It's the only part of their subscription package that I think is reasonable. If you are not a full-time professional using all of those tools, if you are not a full-time professional using all of those tools.

2:17:11 - Andy Ihnatko
And also to defend the subscription it has delivered, in the sense that they keep updating and updating and updating these tools across the entire spectrum, and every time there's a brand, I launch Lightroom on my phone and there's hey, check out, I've updated the app, check out what's new. There's going to be something incredible in there. Oh, the like it has. I won't go into it, but it's. It's really really, really quite wonderful. Is it's the reason why I don't do gaming on my phone? Because adobe lightroom is like every time that I would be all the time I would be spending like just killing time or entertaining myself on my phone with a game. I do the same thing with Lightroom. But these Affinity packages, though, they're perfect for not even just for people who are not necessarily ambitious, but people who, again, don't want to commit to $10 or $12 a month forever. It's definitely, for heaven's sakes, download. It's affinityserifcom. You have to just create an account and that, giving your email address, that's all. You don't have to give them a credit card or anything like that.

2:18:14 - Leo Laporte
Terrific very nice. Glad you picked up on that one. That's a really good deal now. Thank you, Andy. When are you going to be on gbh next, by the way?

2:18:26 - Andy Ihnatko
uh, this friday I'm going to be live at the boston public library studios, so it's 12 30 uh. So if you show up there again, it's a really nice cafe. Fridays are usually a lot of fun. Oftentimes they have musical guests in, so come on in and watch me try to find the intersection point between. This is streaming on the site, so I want to make sure I don't look like a total wastoid, but it's freaking hot and I've got a long commute and I don't want to wear a jacket and a tie. It should be very, very funny, because when I try to make myself look good, it's really quite, quite, quite alarming. And if you can't go to Boston Public Library, go to WGBHnewsorg where you can stream it live or later.

2:19:06 - Leo Laporte
Let Andy, scare you in person.

2:19:08 - Andy Ihnatko
It's great fun, Jason, for everybody else, but these scare you in person. It's great fun Jason for everybody else, but for me I'm just I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get, I'm not gonna acquire that skill at this point in life.

2:19:17 - Leo Laporte
Jason Snell, your pick of the week uh pick of the week.

2:19:20 - Jason Snell
This is uh. If you're an ipad user and you use it, especially with an external uh keyboard, maybe, or you want to have it on a desk or use it with universal control, or you want to you know whatever. You want to attach it to a desk or use it with universal control, or you want to you know whatever you want to attach it to a big monitor. If you use an iPad in those scenarios and I do. This is a new version of something that I've actually used for a while now. It is a desk mount for the iPad called the Kushu X36 Pro Max. This is the new version and among the nice things about it so it's got a clamp, so it goes on your desk. It's got a very sturdy arm that is adjustable, that will let you kind of put it anywhere and tilt it however you want. And my favorite feature of this one is that it has mag pins on it and is now a charger as well. So when it's sitting in the dock and you can fit it in, because it's got the little camera cut out so you know where it goes then it actually will charge your iPad and let it kind of pivot around and you clamp it to your desk, make it fit into your workflow. It could be as a side to your other stuff. You could use it as that sidecar external display for your Mac if you want to.

There are a lot of different uses for it, but I do use my iPad in lots of contexts.

I actually here's a super applicable use case, which is when I'm playing oh wait for it, here it comes Dungeons and Dragons. I put my player sheet up on the iPad over here using that stand, so that I can I mean, we already established that, Leo, we're way past that now. I've got that there in D&D Beyond on the web browser. But just like sitting right there, separate from my screen, which has got I'm doing live streaming and I've got the map up and I've got all that stuff going on and it's nice to have that second screen there. But also if I'm like writing at my bar stool, I can actually just put this on the bar really quick, you know, to clamp it on, and then it's kind of hovering over my workplace as I sit there and write on an external keyboard. Lots of uses for it, You'll know it if it's for you, but I really like that it clamps anywhere and it's got the charge now, so you're not going to end up being sad because your iPad is is is out of battle.

2:21:30 - Andy Ihnatko
yeah a stand or an arm like this is a really big deal if you have like an ipad, particularly when the larger ones because, and if your main computer is like a macbook, because you know that if you don't have the good ones, like you're only limited to one external display and the ability to say, well, I've got my macbook screen, I also have a nice larger screen, but then I also have a third display in the form of a sidecar on my iPad. That's what kind of cracked it for me. I'm still looking forward to when I have a MacBook that can have my desired three displays. But having the iPad as an external display this way on an arm, it was like some of the cheapest money I ever spent, like just most valuable use of money I've ever spent, basically putting this on an arm so I can actually have it high suspended, like right next to my main monitor.

2:22:22 - Leo Laporte
I just bought one Very, very hAndy, yeah yeah, the Q shoe K U X I U X 36 pro, but you'll find it at Q-X-I-U-X-36-PRO, but you'll find it at K-U-X-I-Uco.

2:22:39 - Andy Ihnatko
Look at all the gears in that hinge. I'm on the site. They have the exploded diagram of the hinge. That's a lot of parts. It's solid.

2:22:46 - Jason Snell
It's actually a little hard to move it.

2:22:48 - Leo Laporte
You have to put force in it.

2:22:49 - Jason Snell
But that's because it's solid and sturdy, and yeah, exactly.

2:22:53 - Leo Laporte
You kind of want to get it where it's going and leave it there.

2:22:56 - Jason Snell
It's not cheap, it's not wiggling around and stuff. Let me tell you it is solid.

2:23:00 - Leo Laporte
No wiggling. Mr Snell is at sixcolorscom. His podcasts are at sixcolorscom. Slash Jason he's a busy, busy guy. Plays D&D when he doesn't have other things to do. I do Tune in tonight, tonight's the D&D night.

2:23:17 - Jason Snell
Tuesday nights. Tuesday nights, our four dungeons and and or dragons. What show is that? Is it a live?

2:23:22 - Leo Laporte
stream it's.

2:23:23 - Jason Snell
Total Party Kill on the Incomparable and we do a live stream on the Incomparable's YouTube channel and then we those episodes get put out immediately for members and then we parcel them out weekly on the free feed for people to listen to, after the fact edited down because people love it. It is this weird thing. You know there are a million actual play podcasts out there. Now. We were one of the early ones before I think it even had a name, but like it turns out, people like listening to it. You know it's like a narrative and it's like an improv. It's a very loose narrative. There are jokes, so you people like playing dnd, but but it turns out people like listening too, because they get to get used to the characters and we make jokes and there's inside references and and you know who joins him.

Sometimes, mr micah sergeant can indeed hanging out playing d he's playing on a lot of Tuesday nights, just not this Tuesday night.

2:24:15 - Leo Laporte
Do you think you'd ever want to invite an old guy like me?

2:24:18 - Jason Snell
You want to play D&D sometime? Leo, I never played before.

2:24:22 - Leo Laporte
I feel like that's a real something missing from my resume.

2:24:25 - Jason Snell
Okay, I'm going to throw this out there, which is before the studio goes away what we should do is a. Twit Members extra where we play dnd at the at the desk in costume. Here in costume, are we gonna do a one shot? Let's do a one shot. What's a one shot? Yeah, yeah, a quick adventure a short, a short adventure.

2:24:41 - Leo Laporte
See that you guys are using lingo now and I don't have a lingo? Yeah, it's a lingo, we'll do a one shot and you're the dm.

2:24:49 - Jason Snell
I've never dm'd other than for my family before, but maybe we could find a local dm or I could do it whatever we could maybe talk to her soon, someone maybe you know it'd be a great dm would do it, micah would dm it.

2:24:59 - Leo Laporte
Micah would totally do it I want to get daniel suarez to dm it. That's how he got into writing sci-fi. They've created demon, and freedom, tm and uh. So great books.

2:25:10 - Jason Snell
He started as a dungeon master. Might be fun to do that.

2:25:13 - Leo Laporte
Let's see if we can get Daniel on the horn. I mean, let's go blow it out with a and you know what? Blow it out, we could do it on the last day of the studio.

2:25:22 - Jason Snell
And if you want what says, blow out more than Dungeons and Dragons.

2:25:25 - Leo Laporte
You can have a giant conflagration, you can have a literal dragon yeah, conflagration, you can have a literal dragon.

2:25:31 - Jason Snell
Yeah, red dragon's going to come in and melt everything.

2:25:33 - Leo Laporte
Just burn the whole place down. Sounds about right House of the Dragon. Did you watch on Sundays? Oh sure, finally the big payoff. We've been waiting.

2:25:46 - Jason Snell
We've been waiting for 10 years to see the dragons. Alex, suffice it. There's dragons, there's dragons.

2:25:51 - Leo Laporte
They have the big dragon. Battle Dragons. It's the big battle kids. It was very exciting. Well, that's about it for this week's MacBreak Weekly. We thank you so much for joining us. As usual, when there is nothing to do, it's a very short show, but we are sorry, we'll give you a longer show next week. Thank you, Jason Snell, I'll see you soon. Thank you, Andy, and not go same to you and, of course, Alex Lindsay. Thanks to all of you who joined, especially those of you who are in our club. We really, those of you who are in our club, we really are grateful to you. Thank you so much. We love having this community and we want to keep going. Club twit members bless you. Uh, for everybody else, we'll be back right here, uh, next Tuesday, 11 am, pacific 2 pm eastern, 1800 utc. You can watch now live on all those platforms YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, if I left out Facebook, uh, Kick, I'm sure. LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, yeah, um, so please watch us live huh, google wave we're gonna do.

2:27:04 - Jason Snell
Yeah, we'll all do the wave, let's get on DND beyond, they'll be like when do they start playing DND? And the answer is never, never. They just talk about technology things I don't know.

2:27:14 - Leo Laporte
We never play it. We keep trying. After the fact, on-demand versions of the show are available for download. There's this thing called podcasting. It used to be really big in my day in my youth. twit.tv/mbw is the website you can also subscribe. There's audio and video, by the way, and you can subscribe if you want in a, in a little thing we collect to call a podcast app. Find one, if you can, and download. We like Pocketcast, but Apple has one. There's all sorts of different ones, but if you subscribe, it's free. You'll get it every week the minute it's available. We thank you so much for being here and now, as I have ended every show for the last 20 years, it's time to get back to work because break time is over. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.